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Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Vol. 20, No. 1-2, 81-89 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/0261927X01020001004

Children’s Referential Communication Failure

The Ambiguity and Abbreviation of Message

Dolors Girbau

University Jaume I, girbau{at}psb.uji.es

A referential communication task of abstract figures was performed by 64 third- and fifth-grade speakers, who produced messages for an imaginary listener. The results revealed that 8-year-olds produced twice as many ambiguous messages as 10-year-olds, and that the mean length of message was twice as abbreviated in third than fifth graders. It is concluded that 8-year-olds use speech that is less adapted to an unknown decoder than 10-year-olds (who also produced some ambiguous messages). The roles of breakdown of egocentric speech and task difficulty are discussed.


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