Self-referring terms, event transitivity and development of self

Abstract

We explored 2-year-olds’ developing self-conceptions by examining uses of terms for the self ( I, me, own name) to mark contexts of self-action that varied in transitivity. Children differed in their preferred terms for self-reference ( I versus proper name/ me). “I-users” produced relatively more verbs for highly transitive events that encode subjective experiences of intention and agency and “Name-users” produced relatively more verbs for intransitive events that encode objective experiences of self in motion, even though verb and self-reference vocabularies were similar for the two groups. Results are discussed in terms of children's creative use of language to construct different developmental paths toward self-conceptions and acquisition of the personal pronoun system.