TY - JOUR

T1 - The cognitive demands of remembering a speaker’s perspective and managing common ground size modulate 8- and 10-year-olds’ perspective-taking abilities

AU - Zhao, Lin

AU - Wang, Jen Jessica

AU - Apperly, Ian

N1 - This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 174, 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.05.013

PY - 2018/10

Y1 - 2018/10

N2 - Using “theory of mind” to successfully accommodate differing perspectives during communication requires much more than just acquiring basic theory of mind understanding. Evidence suggests that children’s ability to adopt a speaker’s perspective continues to develop through childhood to adolescence till adulthood (e.g., Dumontheil, Apperly, & Blakemore, 2010). The present study examined the cognitive factors that could account for variations in children’s abilities to use a speaker’s perspective during language comprehension, and whether the same factors contribute to age-related improvements. Our study incorporated into a commonly-used communication task two types of memory demands which are frequently present in our everyday communication but have been overlooked in the previous literature: remembering a speaker’s perspective, and the amount of common ground information. Findings from two experiments demonstrated that both 8- and 10-year-olds committed more egocentric errors when each of these memory demands was high. Our study also found some supporting evidence for the age-related improvement in children’s perspective use, as 10-year-olds generally committed fewer egocentric errors compared to 8-year-olds. Interestingly, there was no clear evidence that the memory factors that affected children’s perspective use in our experiments were also the factors that drove age-related improvement.

AB - Using “theory of mind” to successfully accommodate differing perspectives during communication requires much more than just acquiring basic theory of mind understanding. Evidence suggests that children’s ability to adopt a speaker’s perspective continues to develop through childhood to adolescence till adulthood (e.g., Dumontheil, Apperly, & Blakemore, 2010). The present study examined the cognitive factors that could account for variations in children’s abilities to use a speaker’s perspective during language comprehension, and whether the same factors contribute to age-related improvements. Our study incorporated into a commonly-used communication task two types of memory demands which are frequently present in our everyday communication but have been overlooked in the previous literature: remembering a speaker’s perspective, and the amount of common ground information. Findings from two experiments demonstrated that both 8- and 10-year-olds committed more egocentric errors when each of these memory demands was high. Our study also found some supporting evidence for the age-related improvement in children’s perspective use, as 10-year-olds generally committed fewer egocentric errors compared to 8-year-olds. Interestingly, there was no clear evidence that the memory factors that affected children’s perspective use in our experiments were also the factors that drove age-related improvement.

KW - Common ground

KW - Theory of mind

KW - Perspective taking

KW - Cognitive factors

KW - Age-related development

KW - Referential communication

U2 - 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.05.013

DO - 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.05.013

M3 - Journal article

VL - 174

SP - 130

EP - 149

JO - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

JF - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

SN - 0022-0965

ER -