Eighteen- and 24-month-old infants correct others in anticipation of action mistakes

Much of human communication and collaboration is predicated on making predictions about others' actions. Humans frequently use predictions about others' action mistakes to correct others and spare them mistakes. Such anticipatory correcting reveals a social motivation for unsolicited helping. Cognitively, it requires forward inferences about others' actions through mental attributions of goal and reality representations. The current study shows that infants spontaneously intervene when an adult is mistaken about the location of an object she is about to retrieve. Infants pointed out a correct location for an adult before she was about to commit a mistake. Infants did not intervene in control conditions when the adult had witnessed the misplacement, or when she did not intend to retrieve the misplaced object. Results suggest that preverbal infants anticipate a person's mistaken action through mental attributions of both her goal and reality representations, and correct her proactively by spontaneously providing unsolicited information.     

Pointing out new news, old news, and absent referents at 12 months of age

There is currently controversy over the nature of 1-year-olds' social-cognitive understanding and motives. In this study we investigated whether 12-month-old infants point for others with an understanding of their knowledge states and with a prosocial motive for sharing experiences with them. Declarative pointing was elicited in four conditions created by crossing two factors: an adult partner (1) was already attending to the target event or not, and (2) emoted positively or neutrally. Pointing was also coded after the event had ceased. The findings suggest that 12-month-olds point to inform others of events they do not know about, that they point to share an attitude about mutually attended events others already know about, and that they can point (already prelinguistically) to absent referents. These findings provide strong support for a mentalistic and prosocial interpretation of infants' prelinguistic communication.     

Infants Anticipate Others' Social Preferences

In the current eye‐tracking study, we explored whether 12‐month‐old infants can predict others' social preferences. We showed infants scenes in which two characters alternately helped or hindered an agent in his goal of climbing a hill. In a control condition, the two characters moved up and down the hill in identical ways to the helper and hinderer but did not make contact with the agent; thus, they did not cause him to reach or not reach his goal. Following six alternating familiarization trials of helping and hindering interactions (help–hinder condition) or up and down interactions (up–down condition), infants were shown one test trial in which they could visually anticipate the agent approaching one of the two characters. As predicted, infants in the help–hinder condition made significantly more visual anticipations toward the helping than hindering character, suggesting that they predicted the agent to approach the helping character. In contrast, infants revealed no difference in visual anticipations between the up and down characters. The up–down condition served to control for low‐level perceptual explanations of the results for the help–hinder condition. Thus, together the results reveal that 12‐month‐old infants make predictions about others' behaviour and social preferences from a third‐party perspective. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Language is not necessary for color categories

The origin of color categories is under debate. Some researchers argue that color categories are linguistically constructed, while others claim they have a pre‐linguistic, and possibly even innate, basis. Although there is some evidence that 4–6‐month‐old infants respond categorically to color, these empirical results have been challenged in recent years. First, it has been claimed that previous demonstrations of color categories in infants may reflect color preferences instead. Second, and more seriously, other labs have reported failing to replicate the basic findings at all. In the current study we used eye‐tracking to test 8‐month‐old infants’ categorical perception of a previously attested color boundary (green–blue) and an additional color boundary (blue–purple). Our results show that infants are faster and more accurate at fixating targets when they come from a different color category than when from the same category (even though the chromatic separation sizes were equated). This is the case for both blue–green and blue–purple. Our findings provide independent evidence for the existence of color categories in pre‐linguistic infants, and suggest that categorical perception of color can occur without color language.     

A gestural repertoire of 1- to 2-year-old human children: in search of the ape gestures

Animal Cognition - When we compare human gestures to those of other apes, it looks at first like there is nothing much to compare at all. In adult humans, gestures are thought to be a window into...     

A prelinguistic gestural universal of human communication

Several cognitive accounts of human communication argue for a language-independent, prelinguistic basis of human communication and language. The current study provides evidence for the universality of a prelinguistic gestural basis for human communication. We used a standardized, semi-natural elicitation procedure in seven very different cultures around the world to test for the existence of preverbal pointing in infants and their caregivers. Results were that by 10-14 months of age, infants and their caregivers pointed in all cultures in the same basic situation with similar frequencies and the same proto-typical morphology of the extended index finger. Infants' pointing was best predicted by age and caregiver pointing, but not by cultural group. Further analyses revealed a strong relation between the temporal unfolding of caregivers' and infants' pointing events, uncovering a structure of early prelinguistic gestural conversation. Findings support the existence of a gestural, language-independent universal of human communication that forms a culturally shared, prelinguistic basis for diversified linguistic communication.     

Pupillometry reveals communication‐induced object expectations in 12‐ but not 8‐month‐old infants

Several interaction‐based and looking‐time studies suggest that 1‐year‐old infants understand the referential nature of deictic gestures. However, these studies have not unequivocally established that referential gestures induce object expectations in infants prior to encountering a referent object, and have thus remained amenable to simpler attentional highlighting interpretations. The current study tested whether nonlinguistic referential communication induces object expectations in infants by using a novel pupil dilation paradigm. In Experiment 1, 12‐month‐olds watched videos of a protagonist who either pointed communicatively toward an occluder in front of her or remained still. At test, the occluder opened to reveal one of two outcomes: an empty surface or a toy. Results showed that infants’ pupils were larger for the unexpected outcome of an empty surface following a point compared to the control condition (an empty surface following no point). These differences were not caused by differences in looking times or directions. In Experiment 2, an attention‐directing nonsocial control cue replaced the referential communication. The cue did direct 12‐month‐olds’ attention to the occluder, but it did not induce an object expectation. In Experiment 3, we tested 8‐month‐olds in the setting of Experiment 1. In contrast to 12‐month‐olds, 8‐month‐olds did not reveal object expectations following communication. Findings demonstrate that communicative pointing acts induce object expectations at 12 months of age, but not at 8 months of age, and that these expectations are specific to a referential‐communicative as opposed to an attention‐directing nonsocial cue.     

Prelinguistic Infants, but Not Chimpanzees, Communicate About Absent Entities

ABSTRACT— One of the defining features of human language is displacement , the ability to make reference to absent entities. Here we show that prelinguistic, 12-month-old infants already can use a nonverbal pointing gesture to make reference to absent entities. We also show that chimpanzees—who can point for things they want humans to give them—do not point to refer to absent entities in the same way. These results demonstrate that the ability to communicate about absent but mutually known entities depends not on language, but rather on deeper social-cognitive skills that make acts of linguistic reference possible in the first place. These nonlinguistic skills for displaced reference emerged apparently only after humans' divergence from great apes some 6 million years ago.     

Twelve-month-olds point to share attention and interest

Infants point for various motives. Classically, one such motive is declarative, to share attention and interest with adults to events. Recently, some researchers have questioned whether infants have this motivation. In the current study, an adult reacted to 12-month-olds' pointing in different ways, and infants' responses were observed. Results showed that when the adult shared attention and interest (i.e alternated gaze and emoted), infants pointed more frequently across trials and tended to prolong each point--presumably to prolong the satisfying interaction. However, when the adult emoted to the infant alone or looked only to the event, infants pointed less across trials and repeated points more within trials--presumably in an attempt to establish joint attention. Results suggest that 12-month-olds point declaratively and understand that others have psychological states that can be directed and shared.     

Infants' visual and auditory communication when a partner is or is not visually attending

In the current study we investigated infants' communication in the visual and auditory modalities as a function of the recipient's visual attention. We elicited pointing at interesting events from thirty-two 12-month olds and thirty-two 18-month olds in two conditions: when the recipient either was or was not visually attending to them before and during the point. The main result was that infants initiated more pointing when the recipient's visual attention was on them than when it was not. In addition, when the recipient did not respond by sharing interest in the designated event, infants initiated more repairs (repeated pointing) than when she did, again, especially when the recipient was visually attending to them. Interestingly, accompanying vocalizations were used intentionally and increased in both experimental conditions when the recipient did not share attention and interest. However, there was little evidence that infants used their vocalizations to direct attention to their gestures when the recipient was not attending to them.