Children’s Demonstrative Comprehension and the Role of Non-linguistic Cognitive Abilities: A Cross-Linguistic Study

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that young children often fail to comprehend demonstratives correctly when they are uttered by a speaker whose perspective is different from children's own, and instead tend to interpret them with respect to their own perspective (e.g., Webb and Abrahamson in J Child Lang 3(3):349-367, 1976); Clark and Sengul in J Child Lang 5(3):457-475, 1978). In the current study, we examined children's comprehension of demonstratives in English (this and that) and Mandarin Chinese (zhe and na) in order to test the hypothesis that children's non-adult-like demonstrative comprehension is related to their still-developing non-linguistic cognitive abilities supporting perspective-taking, including Theory of Mind and Executive Function. Testing 3 to 6-year-old children on a set of demonstrative comprehension tasks and assessments of Theory of Mind and Executive Function, our findings revealed that children's successful demonstrative comprehension is related to their development of Theory of Mind and Executive Function, for both of the language groups. These findings suggest that the development of deictic expressions like demonstratives may be related to the development of non-linguistic cognitive abilities, regardless of the language that the children are acquiring.

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

“…V. Clark & Sengul, 1978), it is likely that the lexical level of the framework will be represented in a speaker's long-term lexical memory early in life. However, adult-like, pragmatically appropriate use of these terms takes longer, potentially being fully mastered only after age 6, and possibly connected to and following the child's development of a theory of mind (Chu & Minai, 2018;E. V. Clark & Sengul, 1978;De Cat, 2015;Gundel & Johnson, 2013;Hickmann, Schimke, & Colonna, 2015;Küntay & Özyürek, 2006;Serratrice & Allen, 2015;Tanz, 1980).…”

“…Second, the degree to which specific factors influence demonstrative choice may differ across individuals who speak the same language ('speaker characteristics'). If theory-of-mind development is indeed critical for the acquisition of adult-like use of demonstratives (Chu & Minai, 2018;Küntay & Özyürek, 2006), individual differences in the degree to which speakers take into account the mental state of their addressee (Apperly, 2012;Carlson & Moses, 2001) may drive whether they factor in the relation between the referent and their addressee when selecting a specific demonstrative form. Such individual differences between speakers of the same language may indeed explain part of the substantial variability observed in experiments that elicit demonstratives from different participants under virtually identical circumstances.…”

“…Both the broader adult literature and developmental work on the production of referring expressions, however, suggest various factors that may explain individual differences in speakers' choice of referring expression in general (e.g., Ateş-Şen & Küntay, 2015;De Cat, 2015;Nadig & Sedivy, 2002;Serratrice & Allen, 2015;Uzundag & Küntay, 2018;Wardlow, 2013). Beyond theory-of-mind abilities (Chu & Minai, 2018;Gundel & Johnson, 2013), working memory and executive control skills may contribute to the extent speakers take into account the perspective of their communicative partner (De Cat, 2015;Nilsen & Graham, 2009;Wardlow, 2013). The amount of attentional resources available to a speaker and their capacity to inhibit and switch between perspectives may also play a role (De Cat, 2015; Long, Horton, Rohde, & Sorace, 2018).…”

“…The relatively small number of studies that have explicitly focused on the acquisition of demonstratives make clear that demonstratives as lexical items are acquired early during development, but that it may take years for the child to reach an adult-like use of these terms (Capirci et al, 1996;Chu & Minai, 2018;E. V Clark & Sengul, 1978;Küntay & Özyürek, 2006;Rodrigo et al, 2004;Tanz, 1980;Wales, 1986).…”

“…An interesting avenue for future research would be to study how such speaker characteristics interact with language characteristics and context affordances during different stages of development with regards to the use of demonstratives and referring expressions more broadly (cf. Chu & Minai, 2018).…”