Projects & Findings
Reference & Cognition
Preschoolers: Adult-like use of the
-
Corpus analysis: children (1;0-3;11) use the at rates comparable to their mothers overall and across contexts, with minimal referential failure (Ying et al., 2024).
-
Human simulation paradigm: adults presented with conversation snippets are equally well at guessing determiners (the vs. a) used by children (2;0-5;0) and mothers (Ying et al., 2024).
-
Conversational elicited production: even 3- to 4-year-olds are adult-like in producing the-expressions.(Ying et al., under review)
Figure 1. Production scenario for eliciting referring expressions
Toddlers: How experience matters
-
Video corpus: Mixed uses of the at 14 months, with inconsistent discourse cues but consistent pragmatic cues; yet, production of the at 20 months is context-sensitive. Pragmatic cues may be essential.
Figure 2. Caregivers show no clear preference for the used in subsequent mention than first mention