These findings show that when an adult provides clear direct cues that the reference of a novel
name is a familiar object, children will be guided by these. Such cues are presumably very important for correcting mislearning of names and overextensions. Failure to account for their use would be a weakness for any theory. Although Grassmann and Tomasello (2010) accounted for performance in terms of sociopragmatic understanding, both the lexical principles and perspectivalaccounts can also explain these findings. Children can relax the bias in specific cases given strong evidence that it does not apply (Markman, 1989, p. 215). An adult giving clear ostensive cues about the referent of a novel word is clearly strong evidence (so long as the adult is viewed as reliable). In terms of the perspectival account, children’s own perspective on an object can be externally switched by another speaker using an alternative name without requiring children’s control or reflective awareness (Perner et al., 2002