Significati privati nella comunicazione di bambini di età prescolare

This study investigates the presence of private meanings as a possible reason for pre-school children's communication failures. 35 5-year-old children were tested. Children were first required to perform a typical descriptive referential task. The experimental material consisted of 6 sets of objects plus the set of Glucksberg and Krauss abstract forms. Objects sets were organized into 3 types: shape colour, shape-colour. 30 days afterwards, all children were required to decode the messages they had produced in the preliminary phase and the messages produced by the children they had been paired with according to their communicative ability. The results show that children decode their own messages better than those produced by their paired mates, both with the objects sets and with the Glucksberg and Krauss abstract forms. Message decoding is also affected by object type with Shape sets eliciting more idiosyncratic messages. This supports the hypothesis of the presence of private meanings in pre-schooler speech.