Previous research has suggested that patients meeting criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD) display altered self-related information processing. However, experimental studies on dysfunctional self-referential information processing in BPD are rare. In this study, BPD patients (N = 30) and healthy control participants (N = 30) judged positive, neutral, and negative words in terms of...

This study examined the role of social-referential context in 13- and 18-month-olds' mapping of verbal and nonverbal symbols to object categories. Infants heard either novel words or novel nonverbal sounds in either a referential or nonreferential context. In all conditions, an experimenter engaged in a social-referential interaction and the label was produced while the infant's attention was d...

Previous research suggests that people show increased self-referential processing when they provide criticism to others, and that this self-referential processing can have negative effects on interpersonal perceptions and behavior. The current research hypothesized that adopting a self-distanced perspective (i.e. thinking about a situation from a non-first person point of view), as compared wit...

Non-verbal referential communication is impaired in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, the development of difficulties with referential communication in the younger siblings of children with ASD (High-Risk Siblings)-and the degree to which early referential communication predicts later autism symptomatology-is not clear. We modeled the early developmental trajectories of th...

One standout feature of human language is our ability to reference external objects and events with socially learned symbols, or words. Exploring the phylogenetic origins of this capacity is therefore key to a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of language. While non-human primates can produce vocalizations that refer to external objects in the environment, it is generally accepted th...

INTRODUCTION A distinction has been proposed, on theoretical grounds, between referential and inferential semantic abilities. The former account for the relationship of words to the world, the latter for the relationship of words among themselves. The hypothesis of, at least partially, different neurological underpinnings for this distinction has been supported by the presence of double dissoci...

The beneficial effects of self-referential processing on memory have been demonstrated in numerous experiments with younger adults but have rarely been studied in older individuals. In the present study we tested young people, younger-older adults, and older-older adults in a self-reference paradigm, and compared self-referential processing to general semantic processing. Findings indicated tha...

In humans, referential gestures intentionally draw the attention of a partner to an object of mutual interest, and are considered a key element in language development. Outside humans, referential gestures have only been attributed to great apes and, most recently, ravens. This was interpreted as further evidence for the comparable cognitive abilities of primates and corvids. Here we describe a...

This paper proposes a rational analysis of referential inference. Referential inference is involved whenever a speaker has to provide an utterance that will effect some action on the part of their listener—a situation that occurs constantly in everyday language use. Our rational analysis of referring makes certain assumptions about the goal, environment, and computational constraints involved i...

In this paper we discuss referential choice – the process of referential device selection made by the speaker in the course of discourse production. We aim at explaining the actual referential choices attested in the discourse sample. Two alternative models of referential choice are discussed. The first approach of Kibrik (1996, 1999, 2000) is the cognitive calculative approach. It suggests tha...