Two-Year-Olds Use Pragmatic Cues to Differentiate Reference to Objects and Actions

Abstract Previous studies have found that children can use social-pragmatic cues to determine “which one” of several objects or “which one’ of several actions an adult intends to indicate with a novel word. The current studies attempted to determine whether children can also use such cues to determine “what kind” of referent, object, or action, an adult intends to indicate. In the first study, 27-month-old children heard an adult use a nonce word in conjunction with a nameless object while it was engaged in a nameless action. The discourse situation leading into this naming event was manipulated so that in one condition the target action was the one new element in the discourse context at the time of the naming event, and in another condition the target object was the one new element. Results showed that children learned the new word for whichever element was new to the discourse context. The second study followed this same general method, but in this case children in one condition watched as an adult engaged in preparatory behaviors that indicated her desire that the child perform the action before she produced the novel word, whereas children in another condition saw no such preparation. Results showed that children who saw the action preparation learned the new word for the action, whereas children who saw no preparation learned the new word for the object. These two studies demonstrate the important role of social-pragmatic information in early word learning, and suggest that if there is a Whole Object assumption in early lexical acquisition, it is an assumption that may be very easily overridden.