Do You Know What I Know? The Impact of Participant Role in Children's Referential Communication
For successful language use, interlocutors must be able to accurately assess their shared knowledge (“common ground”). Such knowledge can be accumulated through linguistic and non-linguistic context, but the same context can be associated with different patterns of knowledge, depending on the interl...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4763043/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26941681 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00213 |
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author | Branigan, Holly P. Bell, Jenny McLean, Janet F. |
author_facet | Branigan, Holly P. Bell, Jenny McLean, Janet F. |
author_sort | Branigan, Holly P. |
collection | PubMed |
description | For successful language use, interlocutors must be able to accurately assess their shared knowledge (“common ground”). Such knowledge can be accumulated through linguistic and non-linguistic context, but the same context can be associated with different patterns of knowledge, depending on the interlocutor's participant role (Wilkes-Gibbs and Clark, 1992). Although there is substantial evidence that children's ability to model partners' knowledge develops gradually, most such evidence focuses on non-linguistic context. We investigated the extent to which 8- to 10-year-old children can assess common ground developed through prior linguistic context, and whether this is sensitive to variations in participant role. Children repeatedly described tangram figures to another child, and then described the same figures to a third child who had been a side-participant, an overhearer, or absent during the initial conversation. Children showed evidence of partner modeling, producing shorter referential expressions with repeated mention to the same partner. Moreover, they demonstrated sensitivity to differences in common ground with the third child based on participant role on some but not all measures (e.g., description length, but not definiteness). Our results suggest that by ten, children make distinctions about common ground accumulated through prior linguistic context but do not yet consistently deploy this knowledge in an adult-like way. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4763043 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-47630432016-03-03 Do You Know What I Know? The Impact of Participant Role in Children's Referential Communication Branigan, Holly P. Bell, Jenny McLean, Janet F. Front Psychol Psychology For successful language use, interlocutors must be able to accurately assess their shared knowledge (“common ground”). Such knowledge can be accumulated through linguistic and non-linguistic context, but the same context can be associated with different patterns of knowledge, depending on the interlocutor's participant role (Wilkes-Gibbs and Clark, 1992). Although there is substantial evidence that children's ability to model partners' knowledge develops gradually, most such evidence focuses on non-linguistic context. We investigated the extent to which 8- to 10-year-old children can assess common ground developed through prior linguistic context, and whether this is sensitive to variations in participant role. Children repeatedly described tangram figures to another child, and then described the same figures to a third child who had been a side-participant, an overhearer, or absent during the initial conversation. Children showed evidence of partner modeling, producing shorter referential expressions with repeated mention to the same partner. Moreover, they demonstrated sensitivity to differences in common ground with the third child based on participant role on some but not all measures (e.g., description length, but not definiteness). Our results suggest that by ten, children make distinctions about common ground accumulated through prior linguistic context but do not yet consistently deploy this knowledge in an adult-like way. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-02-23 /pmc/articles/PMC4763043/ /pubmed/26941681 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00213 Text en Copyright © 2016 Branigan, Bell and McLean. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Branigan, Holly P. Bell, Jenny McLean, Janet F. Do You Know What I Know? The Impact of Participant Role in Children's Referential Communication |
title | Do You Know What I Know? The Impact of Participant Role in Children's Referential Communication |
title_full | Do You Know What I Know? The Impact of Participant Role in Children's Referential Communication |
title_fullStr | Do You Know What I Know? The Impact of Participant Role in Children's Referential Communication |
title_full_unstemmed | Do You Know What I Know? The Impact of Participant Role in Children's Referential Communication |
title_short | Do You Know What I Know? The Impact of Participant Role in Children's Referential Communication |
title_sort | do you know what i know? the impact of participant role in children's referential communication |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4763043/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26941681 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00213 |
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