Twelve‐month‐olds’ comprehension and production of pointing |
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| Authors: | Tanya Behne Ulf Liszkowski Malinda Carpenter Michael Tomasello |
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| Institution: | 1. Courant Research Centre ‘Evolution of Social Behaviour’, University of G?ttingen, Germany;2. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands;3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig, Germany |
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| Abstract: | This study explored whether infants aged 12 months already recognize the communicative function of pointing gestures. Infants participated in a task requiring them to comprehend an adult's informative pointing gesture to the location of a hidden toy. They mostly succeeded in this task, which required them to infer that the adult was attempting to direct their attention to a location for a reason – because she wanted them to know that a toy was hidden there. Many of the infants also reversed roles and produced appropriate pointing gestures for the adult in this same game, and indeed there was a correlation such that comprehenders were for the most part producers. These findings indicate that by 12 months of age infants are beginning to show a bidirectional understanding of communicative pointing. |
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