Abstract
This study examined the development of comparison skills and the knowledge of comparison strategy in a referential communication paradigm. The subjects were five, eight, and eleven years old children tested under two stimulus conditions. In the Catalogue condition, six drawings of similar referents were presented. In the Referent conditon, only one of these referents was presented. All subjects were given two types of feedback after their initial description. In “detail” feedback, they were asked to reformulate their messages more clearly, and in the “elaborated” feedback, the subjects were asked to further describe the referent by distinguishing it from other referents. Greater descriptive adequacy was found for all three age groups in the Catalogue condition, than in the Referent condition and also greater descriptive adequacy for the “elaborated” feedback than for “detail” feedback. However, the five-year old children showed poorer performance campared to the older children. It was concluded that five-year old children were capable of comparison activity on even complex tasks, but they were not enough competent to adopt comparison strategy appropriately.
