Daniela K. O'Neill

Two-year-old children's sensitivity to the referential (in)efficacy of their own pointing gestures.

In three studies, two-year-old children communicated to a parent which of two out-of-reach objects contained a sticker. Across trials, the objects were positioned in different configurations so that it was possible or impossible for a childs pointing gesture to unambiguously specify one object. In Study 1, the objects used were two boxes distinguished by a different picture of a vehicle on the front, and children (n = 16; mean age 2;8) were significantly more likely to name the boxs picture on trials where pointing alone could not unambiguously specify the box than on trials where it could. In Studies 2 and 3, the stickers were hidden inside different animal figures. Older two-year-olds (n = 16, mean age 2;9), but not younger two-year-olds (n = 16, mean age 2;4), showed an ability to recognize the referential (in)efficacy of their pointing gestures and to adapt their communication accordingly.

Mothers’ complex talk when sharing books with their toddlers: Book genre matters:

This study investigated the influence of book genre (narrative or didactic) on mothers’ language use during a book sharing interaction with their 18- to 25-month-olds. Mother–child dyads were videotaped sharing both a narrative and a didactic book, adapted from two commercially available books, and matched in terms of length, quantity of text, and target content. A greater proportion of mothers’ talk was complex (i.e., predictions, text-to-life comparisons) during narrative book sharing than during didactic book sharing. Mothers also used a greater variety of verb tenses and referenced more mental states during narrative book sharing. These results differ from findings from previous studies with older children where it has been concluded that didactic books offer greater opportunities for complex talk than narrative books. The results also highlight the importance of taking situational factors into account when investigating parent–child communicative interactions.

Young preschoolers' ability to reference story characters: the contribution of gestures and character speech

The ability of 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 48) ability to (re)introduce main characters when narrating a picture-book was assessed, taking into account not only their use of nominal forms, but also their use of deictic point gestures and character speech. Using these paralinguistic means, 3-year-olds clarified a significantly larger proportion (43%) of their initially unclear (re)introductions than 4-year-olds did (21%), and attained the same final level of clarity. Thus, 3- and 4-year-olds appear similarly sensitive to the need to specify, unambiguously, referents in cases of (re)introduction, differing only in their linguistic ability to do so. These results support the view that gesture and affect form wholly integrated systems with speech, conveying nonredundant information.

‘I like Barney’: Preschoolers’ spontaneous conversational initiations with peers

In the absence of scaffolding provided by adults or a play situation, what topics will preschoolers raise in attempting to begin conversations with each other? This study provides a first in-depth examination of preschoolers’ peer-to-peer conversational initiations. The snack-time conversations of a class of 25 preschool children were videotaped bi-weekly for 21 weeks; 507 conversational initiations were identified and classified according to a detailed coding scheme that included utterance type (e.g., comment, question), person or object referent, person referenced (e.g., self, listener), and, of particular interest, reference to mental states. Of all initiations, 77.5% referenced persons (41.2% listener) and almost 30% referenced mental states, suggesting preschoolers are using their developing understanding of mind in finding common ground with peers.

Constructing Spatial Representations from Narratives and Non-Narrative Descriptions: Evidence from 7-year-olds.

Although narratives often contain detailed descriptions of space and setting and readers frequently report vividly imagining these story worlds, evidence for the construction of spatial representations during narrative processing is currently mixed. In the present study, we investigated 7 year old childrens ability to construct spatial representations of narrative spaces and compared this to the ability to construct representations from non-narrative descriptions. We hypothesized that performance would be better in the narrative condition, where children have the opportunity to construct a multi-dimensional situation model built around the characters motivations and actions. Children listened to either a narrative that included a character traveling between 5 locations in her neighbourhood or a description of the same 5-location neighbourhood. Those in the narrative condition significantly outperformed those in the description condition in constructing the layout of the neighbourhood locations. Moreover, regression analyses revealed that whereas performance on the narrative version was predicted by narrative comprehension ability, performance on the description version was predicted by working memory ability. These results suggest the possibility that building spatial representations from narratives and non-narratives may engage different cognitive processes.