The development of communicative perspective-taking during the

preschool years

Susan Graham

Dept. of Psychology

University of Calgary

When learning language….

Children must acquire:– Sounds– Words– Grammar

And– How language is used

to communicate

Our research focus

Communicative perspective-taking

• how children recognize and adapt their communications based on another’s perspective

Children’s consideration of communicative partners’ perspective

Nayer & Graham, 2006

Children’s consideration of communicative partners’ perspective

Conditions:

• Parent present versus Parent Absent

Question:

• Do children modify their requests when the parent does not know which toy is the “magic toy”?

Children’s consideration of communicative partners’ perspective

Nayer & Graham, 2006

Movie to go here

Children’s consideration of communicative partners’ perspective

Nayer & Graham, 2006

• 3-year-olds offered more information to parents when parent was absent when “magic toy” was identified versus when parent was present.

• Mostly gestures at this stage.

A more demanding task…..

How well do children use another’s perspective to guide their production of messages?

Nilsen & Graham,under review

Making requests

“Ask Hayli to pick up this one”

Conditions

CommonGroundCondition

PrivilegedGroundCondition

BaselineCondition

Production task

05

101520253035404550

Baseline PrivilegedGround

CommonGround

Condition

Percentage of Trials with

Adjective

Overall Conclusions

Developmental emergence of communicative perspective-taking skills:

• 3-year-olds will provide more information to an unknowledgeable partner vs. a knowledgeable partner

• Young 5-year-olds will adjust their requests to fit a listener’s perspective.

Collaborators:

Samantha Nayer

Liz Nilsen, University of Waterloo

Members of the Language and Cognitive Development Lab

Thank youThank you