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,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Developmental science 2004-06, Vol.7 (3), p.297-307
Main Authors: Liszkowski, Ulf, Carpenter, Malinda, Henning, Anne, Striano, Tricia, Tomasello, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Analysis of Variance
Attention
Child Development
Discrimination Learning
Emotions
Facial Expression
Humans
Infant
Infants
Interaction
Nonverbal Communication
Orientation
Pilot Projects
Psychological Patterns
Responses
Time Factors
Visual Perception
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:1363-755X
1467-7687
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2004.00349.x