Infant pointing serves an interrogative function

Katarina Begus · Victoria Southgate

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Child and Animal Learning Development Language Development and Disorders Social Robot Interaction and HRI

Abstract

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the motivations behind, and the function of, infant pointing behaviour. Many studies have converged on the view that early pointing reflects a motivation to share attention and interest with others. Under one view, it is the sharing of attention itself that is the ultimate function of pointing, and is an early manifestation of a uniquely human social cognition that is geared towards cooperation and collaboration. In the current study, we tested an alternative hypothesis in which the goal of pointing is not attention sharing itself, but the information-laden response that infants tend to receive as a result of sharing attention. If infants indeed point in order to obtain information, their pointing should be modulated by the perceived ability of the other to provide this information. In Experiment 1, 16-month-olds who interacted with a demonstrably knowledgeable experimenter pointed significantly more to novel objects than infants who interacted with an ignorant experimenter. In Experiment 2, we confirmed that this finding was due to the perceived competence of the experimenter rather than to the different ways in which the experimenter responded to infants' points. Our results suggest that one function of pointing in infancy is to obtain information from others, and that infants selectively elicit desired information from those whom they perceive could competently provide it.

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References

2009Natural pedagogy 1975The Acquisition of Performatives Prior to Speech.2005Gesture Paves the Way for Language Development 2007A New Look at Infant Pointing 2003Pointing : where language, culture, and cognition meet 2011Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation 2009The Wick in the Candle of Learning 2006Exploring the Psychology of Interest

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2016Infants ask for help when they know they don’t know 2016Infants’ preferences for native speakers are associated with an expectation of information 2014Infants Learn What They Want to Learn: Responding to Infant Pointing Leads to Superior Learning 2014Pointing as Epistemic Request: 12‐month‐olds Point to Receive New Information 2018Question-asking in childhood: A review of the literature and a framework for understanding its development 2023The violation-of-expectation paradigm: A conceptual overview.

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