Children’s sensitivity to caregiver cues and the role of adult feedback in the developmentof referential communication

Abstract

Many studies have examined when children are (in)competent in making appropriate referential choices based on their listeners' requirements. Traditionally, child-level social-cognitive abilities have been invoked in explaining the increasing sophistication of referential skills with age. However, recent research has generated interest in the contributions of interactive partners and motivations to the developmental process. This chapter presents and critically evaluates research emphasizing the influence of adult behavior and feedback on the development of children's referential skills. The first section reviews studies examining how children's skills improve by developing sensitivity to adults' verbal and non-verbal communicative cues. The second section reviews training studies that investigate how adult feedback affects children's improvement in referential communication. The third section provides some concluding remarks and future directions.

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

“…This idea is confirmed by the infant literature on the acquisition of reference more broadly. Also when looking at referring expressions beyond demonstratives, the acquisition of the referential lexical items typically precedes their adult-like use, which itself is dependent on, for instance, the child's development of executive control and theory-of mind skills (Ateş-Şen & Küntay, 2015;De Cat, 2015;Gundel et al, 2013;Nadig & Sedivy, 2002;Serratrice & Allen, 2015;Uzundag & Küntay, 2018). 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.…”

Child-Robot Interactions for Second Language Tutoring to Preschool Children

“…Feedback, too, is an interactional feature known to help language learning (Matthews et al, 2007 ; Ateş-Şen and Küntay, 2015 ). The question is how should the robot provide feedback, such that it is both pleasant and effective for learning?…”

Guidelines for Designing Social Robots as Second Language Tutors

“…L2 learning is no exception, and several factors such as interactivity must be considered (see [38] for a review). In addition to quantity, socio-pragmatic forms of interaction involving joint attention, non-verbal interaction, feedback, and temporal and semantic contingencies are expected to contribute to L2 learning [3,9,59,66]. However, there are also some notable differences between L1 and L2 learning.…”

“…A typical adult-like strategy known to support language learning is the use of appropriate feedback [3]. Adult caregivers tend to provide positive feedback explicitly (e.g., 'well done!')…”