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  • Title: Infants' use of shared linguistic information to clarify ambiguous requests.
    Author: Ganea PA, Saylor MM.
    Journal: Child Dev; 2007; 78(2):493-502. PubMed ID: 17381786.
    Abstract:
    Do infants use past linguistic information to interpret an ambiguous request for an object? When infants in this research were shown 2 objects, and asked for 1 with an indefinite request (e.g., "Can you get it for me?"), both 15- and 18-month-olds used the speaker's previous reference to an absent object to interpret the request. The 18-month-olds did so even when the request was made after a 2.5-min delay. When the request was made by a person who did not participate in the conversation, the infants did not use the previous verbal information. These results demonstrate infants' ability to use language as a source of information in ambiguous contexts and indicate an early appreciation of the shared nature of conversation.
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