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. Declar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Developmental science 2007-03, Vol.10 (2), p.F1-F7
Main Authors: Liszkowski, Ulf, Carpenter, Malinda, Tomasello, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis of Variance
Child Development
Cognition - physiology
Female
Gestures
Humans
Infant
Infants
Intention
Language Acquisition
Male
Motivation
Nonverbal Communication
Photic Stimulation
Social Cognition
Social Perception
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1363-755X
1467-7687
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2006.00552.x