Children communicate and use language in social interactions from a very young age. They experiment with their developing linguistic knowledge and receive valuable feedback from their interlocutors. We formalize a mechanism for language acquisition, whereby children can improve their linguistic knowledge in conversation by leveraging explicit or implicit signals of communication success or failure. Examples for such communicative feedback signals are shown in the figure above. Our review article envisions a more complete understanding of language acquisition within and through social interaction.
Mitja Nikolaus & Abdellah Fourtassi. Communicative Feedback in Language Acquisition. 2023. New Ideas in Psychology 68: 100985 — @HAL