10.12.2024 - Aylin Küntay

Humans and other animals refer to things, people, events and other referrables using multimodal communication each day every day during interactions. The communicative task of referring appears straightforward, but it often is not and may be developmentally somewhat challenging. Referential communication is an area where pragmatic knowledge, social-cognition, and interactive communication come together. For it to develop I will present a few of the experimental and semi-naturalistic studies that our Language and Communication Lab has conducted with preschoolers and infants about referential behavior. I will also attempt to bring in evolutionarily relevant data and thoughts.