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Three experiments examined 4- to 6-year-olds' use of potential cues to geographic background. In Experiment 1 (N = 72), 4- to 5-year-olds used a speaker's foreign accent to infer that they currently live far away, but 6-year-olds did not. In Experiment 2 (N = 72), children at all ages used accent to infer where a speaker was born. In both experiments, race played some role in children's geographic inferences. Finally, in Experiment 3 (N = 48), 6-year-olds used language to infer both where a speaker was born and where they currently live. These findings reveal critical differences across development in the ways that speaker characteristics are used as inferential cues to a speaker's geographic location and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
