3-213 - The Effect of Common Knowledge on Children’s Communication

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Successful communication relies on the mutual knowledge or the common ground that speakers share with their interlocutors (Clark, 1996). Common ground can be based on shared personal experiences between individuals or on the “assumptions that members of the community assume they can take for granted in other members” - the cultural common ground (Clark, 1996, p.102). The papers in this symposium investigate how children rely on personal and cultural common ground in their communication with others. Paper 1 investigates how toddlers interpret an ambiguous reference depending on the personal common ground and the level of excitement displayed by the speaker. Paper 2 demonstrates how personal common ground, “the experiential common ground”, facilitates preschoolers’ interpretation of a referential term in the absence of mutual visibility. Paper 3 examines whether preschoolers establish “referential pacts” with peers to refer to objects/people in certain ways and selectively use these pacts only with peers who share this common ground. Paper 4 investigates how children use cultural common ground when they cooperate with a partner to achieve coordination versus when they want to deceive a partner in a competitive context. Overall, the papers suggest that children of different ages use common ground effectively in their interactions.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Bahar Koymen, Max Planck Inst for Evol Anthropology

Individual Presentations

• Toddlers use Intonation to Interpret Ambiguous Reference - Presenting Author: Maria Osina, Vanderbilt University; Megan M Saylor, Vanderbilt University

• Four-year-olds Recover Referents on Various Grounds in an Ambiguous Communication task - Presenting Author: Henrike Moll, University of Southern California - SGM; Lillie Moffett, University of Southern California; Derya Kadipasaoglu, University of Southern California

• Common Ground and Referential Pacts in peer Interactions - Presenting Author: Bahar Koymen, Max Planck Inst for Evol Anthropology; Daniel Schmerse, PädQUIS gGmbH - Collaborative Institute of Freie Universität Berlin; Elena Lieven, University of Manchester; Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute

• Children’s Capacity to use Cultural Focal Points in Coordination Problems - Presenting Author: Gil Diesendruck, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan; Efrat Goldvicht-Bacon, Bar-Ilan University