Infants’ Use of Intonation to Interpret Ambiguous Reference
Keywords:
language development, reference resolution, intonation, common ground
Abstract
We investigated infants’ ability to use intonation to interpret ambiguous requests for objects. In Experiment 1, two experimenters took turns playing with infants each with her own ball. When both balls were present, one of the experimenters made an ambiguous request "Do you see it? Can you give it to me?” in either an excited or a neutral way. Twenty-month-olds were more likely to select the new than the familiar ball for the experimenter in response to the excited request. In the neutral condition, however, they did not show a significant preference for any balls. Sixteen-month-olds selected new and familiar balls at chance in both conditions. In Experiment 2, the experimenter played with 20-month-olds with an object and displayed high excitement toward it. At test, she saw a similar object and a new object, and asked infants in an excited way “Can you give it to me?” In this case excitement could be interpreted as directed toward the object similar to the one the experimenter played with before. Nevertheless, infants selected the new object at above chance levels. These findings suggest that at 20 months, infants consistently interpret excitement as indicating new things.Downloads
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References
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2. Ganea, P. A., & Saylor, M. M. (2007). Infants’ use of shared linguistic information to clarify ambiguous requests. Child Development, 78(2), 493-502.
3. Liebal, K., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2010). Infants’ use of shared experience in declarative pointing. Infancy, 15(5), 545-556.
4. Moll, H., Koring, C., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Infants determine others’ focus of attention by pragmatics and exclusion. Journal of Cognition and Development, 7(3), 411-430.
5. Moll, H., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Fourteen month olds know what others experience only in joint engagement. Developmental Science, 10(6), 826-835.
6. Rossano, F., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2012). One-year-old infants follow others’ voice direction. Psychological Science, 23(11), 1298-1302.
7. Samuelson, L. K., & Smith, L. B. (1998). Memory and attention make smart word learning: An alternative account of Akhtar, Carpenter, and Tomasello. Child Development, 69(1), 94-104.
8. Saylor, M. M., & Ganea, P. (2007). Infants interpret ambiguous requests for absent objects. Developmental Psychology, 43(3), 696-704.
9. Saylor, M. M., Ganea, P. A., & Vázquez, M. D. (2011). What’s mine is mine: Twelve month olds use possessive pronouns to identify referents. Developmental Science, 14(4), 859-864.
10. Southgate, V., Chevallier, C., & Csibra, G. (2010). Seventeen month olds appeal to false beliefs to interpret others’ referential communication. Developmental Science, 13(6), 907-912.
11. Tomasello, M. (2009).The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
12. Tomasello, M., & Akhtar, N. (1995). Two-year-olds use pragmatic cues to differentiate reference to objects and actions. Cognitive Development, 10(2), 201-224.
13. Tomasello, M., & Farrar, M. J. (1986). Joint attention and early language.Child Development, 57(6), 1454-1463.
14. Tomasello, M., & Haberl, K. (2003). Understanding attention: 12- and 18-month-olds know what is new for other persons. Developmental Psychology, 39(5), 906-912.
Published
2018-11-06
How to Cite
ОсинаМ., & СэйлорМ. (2018). Infants’ Use of Intonation to Interpret Ambiguous Reference. Psychology. Journal of the Higher School of Economics, 14(2), 236-249. https://doi.org/10.17323/1813-8918-2017-2-236-249
Issue
Section
Current Studies in Cognitive Development: Social Learning, Communication
