Rethinking the Effects of Plot Centrality and Age in the Acquisition of Referent Introduction
Ilkyu Kim · 2013
It is widely known that how children produce referring expressions in their narratives is crucially affected by plot centrality (main vs. peripheral characters) and their age. However, no consensus has been made on why the plot centrality effect exists, and two contrasting views exist on when children master the ability to use proper linguistic forms in their production of referring expressions, namely, the early-mastery view and the late-mastery view. The purpose of this paper is to provide a unified solution for these two issues, focusing on Korean children’s introduction of new referents. To be more specific, it is claimed that the plot centrality effect shown by Korean children’s referent introduction can best be explained by the interaction of cognitively demanding tasks such as story-retelling and one’s ability to exploit theory of mind (ToM). As for the disagreement on when children acquire an adult-level ability to properly introduce referents, I reconcile the conflict between the two opposing views (i.e., the early-mastery view vs. the late-mastery view) by claiming that children master the ability early but this ability is not fully displayed in their performance due to the cognitive load imposed by complex cognitive tasks.