Although most English-speaking children master the correct use of first
and second person pronouns by three years, some children show
persistent reversal errors in which they refer to themselves as you and to
others as me. Recently, such differences have been attributed to the
relative availability of overheard speech during the learning process.
The present study tested this proposal with feed-forward neural networks
learning these pronouns. Network learning speed and analysis of
their knowledge representations confirmed the importance of exposure
to shifting reference provided by overheard speech. Errorless pronoun
learning was linked to the amount of overheard speech, interactions with
a greater number of speakers, and prior knowledge of the basic-level
kind PERSON.