Children's interpretations of ambiguous spatial descriptions

Children from 3 to 7 years of age and adults were asked to determine the location for top and front of an object. They listened to a verbal description and then positioned a given object (referent object) to indicate the intended top or front relation of another object (relatum object). The descriptions were ambiguous in that each could refer to two different locations. The location could be determined by the intrinsic structure of the relatum object or the extrinsic position of that object in space. Three features of the description were examined for their role in determining the spatial reference: the object being described ( relatum ), the kind of object used to indicate the top or front relation ( referent ), and the presence of the definite article in the description ( predicate ). There were two main results. First, descriptions of front were generally interpreted intrinsically while descriptions of top were generally interpreted extrinsically. Intrinsic interpretations of top, however, increased as a function of the three features examined. Second, the three features became relevant for determining top at different ages. All subjects attended to properties of the object relatum, 5‐year‐old children attended as well to the object referent, and oldest children and adults additionally considered the presence of the definite article in the predicate.