Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

How do children learn to connect expressions (e.g "that red apple") to the real-world objects they refer to? The dominant view in developmental psychology is that children rely on descriptive information (red,apple). In contrast, linguistic theories of adult language attribute primacy to the grammar: words like "that" or "another" first establish the status of potential referents within the discourse context (old, new) before descriptions can factor in. These theories predict that reference can succeed even when the description does not match the referent. We explore this novel prediction in adults and children. Over three experiments, we found that (i) adults relied on the articles to identify the referent, even when the description did not fit, consistent with 'grammar-first' accounts; (ii) consistent with 'description-first' accounts, and unlike adults, 3-5yo children prioritized the descriptions provided by the nouns, despite being sensitive to grammatical information. This suggests that children connect expressions to referents differently from adults.