How adults contribute to the development of early referential communication?

The study focuses on the organization of prelinguistic «referential» communication routines and their effects on infant’s progressive mastery of protoreferential communication. Routines are defined here as exchanges where turn-taking and/or topic are repetead and conventionalized. The design compares an experimental group and a control group in a pretest/post test format. In the experimental group, routinized exchanges about a poster are encouraged. Three «training» sessions are devoted to the establishment of routines. The sample was composed of 13 infants aged 12 to 13 months and their mothers. Comparisons between the pretest and the postest for the E group infants show an increase in the time devoted to referential behavior, in the number of infant initiations of dialogue on the poster and in the use of pointing. For the mothers, results show that, during the three «training» sessions, E group mothers, produce more points than C group mothers and tend to «confirm» infants’ pointing plus vocalization as though it was a complete reference. Findings are discussed in terms of conventionalization of protoreferential gestures and vocalizations.