Learning the deictic meaning of third person pronouns.

Abstract

Forty-two children (2;8-5;7) viewed video-taped "scenes' in which a SPEAKER addressed sentences containing a personal pronoun which referred to him/herself, the ADDRESSEE or a male or female OTHER. The child's task was to identify the referent of the pronoun. No other cues to the identity of the referent were given. Errors showed that initially gender was the variable used to identify referents and that person was used only later. Several of the oldest children still used only gender in some types of utterance situations. This was because the deictic roles OTHER and, to some extent, ADDRESSEE, were not fully understood until relatively late. Possible explanations concerned the use of Baby Talk to children and information processing necessary for referent identification.