[A study on the development of message-production in the referential communication].

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of message-production in a referential communication paradigm. Children (3-12 years) were asked to mention the associative encodings of two kinds of figures and then verbally communicate the figures to the adult and peer listeners. Differences in content and mode of encoding under the associative and communicative conditions were analyzed. Five-year-olds showed more changes of mode than three-year-olds. As for the changes of content, however, five-year-olds showed less than the others did. It was concluded that in the development of message-production, the changes of mode began to appear simultaneously when the associative encodings of the figures became stable, and afterwards the changes of content appeared. Differences between the messages for the adult and peer listeners were also analyzed.