Infants’ understanding of the point gesture as an object-directed action

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• 作者：Woodward ; Amanda L. ; Guajardo ; Jose J.
• 关键词：Infants ; Point gesture ; Object-directed action
• 刊名：Cognitive Development
• 出版年：2002
• 出版时间：January - March, 2002
• 年：2002
• 卷：17
• 期：1
• 页码：1061-1084
• 全文大小：320 K

文摘

There have been many studies of infants’ propensity to orient in response to a point. However, little is known about infants’ understanding of the relation between a person who points and the referent object. In Study 1, a habituation paradigm was used to assess this understanding in 9- and 12-month-old infants. Infants saw an actor point to one of two toys during habituation, and then saw test events in which either the referent object or path of motion taken by the actor’s arm had changed. Twelve-month-olds looked longer at the former test event than the latter, indicating that they had encoded the relation between the actor and the referent. Nine-month-olds, in contrast, looked equally long at the two test events. Coding of infants’ attentional responses to the points indicated that these results did not derive from the “spotlighting” effects of points. These findings suggest that between 9 and 12 months, infants come to understand pointing as an object-directed action. The results of Study 2 suggest that between these ages, infants’ own use of object-directed points is related to their understanding of the points of others as object-directed.