Children's Social Information Seeking is Sensitive to Referential Ambiguity.
Child Dev
; 91(6): e1178-e1193, 2020 11.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-32767767
ABSTRACT
We examined children's spontaneous information seeking in response to referential ambiguity. Children ages 2-5 (n = 160) identified the referents of familiar and novel labels. We manipulated ambiguity by changing the number of objects present and their familiarity (Experiments 1 and 2), and the availability of referential gaze (Experiment 2). In both experiments, children looked to the face of the experimenter more often while responding, specifically when the referent was ambiguous. In Experiment 2, 3- to 4-year olds also demonstrated sensitivity to graded referential evidence. These results suggest that social information seeking is an active learning behavior that could contribute to language acquisition in early childhood.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Child Behavior
/
Recognition, Psychology
/
Information Seeking Behavior
/
Language Development
Type of study:
Diagnostic_studies
Limits:
Child, preschool
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
Child Dev
Year:
2020
Document type:
Article