In a consideration of the development of referential communication performance, this paper describes three broad capacities that appear to underlie successful performance: the speaker's ability to analyze the persepective of the listener and formulate a message with this perspective in mind, the child's ability to meet the information processing demands of particular communication tasks, and the child's ability to analyze messages after they have been produced. After an introductory section, the paper first deals with listener analytic skills. Specifically it discusses adult performance and considers the egocentrism hypothesis with reference to age differences in communication accuracy, message contingency, self- versus other-communication, variation in listener attributes, correlation with perspective taking measures, and training studies. Some attention is also given to component skills. The next section of the paper presents a discussion of task analytic skills as they relate to both adult and children's performance. Training studies in this area are also examined. The following section details message analytic skills, with a consideration of both listener and appraisal ability, and includes an analysis of feedback utilization. The final topic of discussion is referential communication and ecological validity. (FL)