ABSTRACT
In a puzzle completion task designed to elicit demonstratives, Spanish-speaking children and adults directed an experimenter to select puzzle pieces differing in location and in shared focus of attention. Three- to five-year-old children were not all sensitive to referent location when selecting a demonstrative. By contrast, six- to eight-year-old children routinely produced esta for closer pieces and esa for more distal pieces. Adults demonstrated an additional sensitivity to intersubjective space by increasing reliance on esta to overcome a lack of shared attentional focus, but no such adjustments were found in the children’s demonstrative use. These results suggest a developmental trajectory whereby children first learn the proximal-distal dimension and later learn how to incorporate subjectively-construed space into their use of demonstratives.
