One of the most basic functions of language is to communicate information to other people about particular referents. A referent could be, for example, an object, a location or an idea. Referential communication, as it is termed, can be distinguished from other functions of communication. The referential function of language has received the greatest research attention to date because of its relative simplicity, apparent pervasiveness, and also because it is probably a component of other, more complex types of communication functions. Considerable research efforts have been devoted to studying the development of referential communication performance, and it is clear from a variety of studies that referential communication performance improves over age. However, the specific skills that contribute to improvement over age are not well understood. The chapter highlights three broad capacities that appear to underlie successful communication performance: (1) the speaker's ability to analyze the perspective of his or her listener and formulate a message with this perspective in mind, (2) the listener's analytic skills, and (3) task analytic skills.
