The scientists tested whether 18-month-olds use more unambiguous pointing gestures when their communicative partner has a higher need for information. Two adults showed the participants a wind-up puppet (that the children were very fond of) and a simple building block (that was much less popular). They then played a hiding game together: one adult would hide the objects behind each (other under two identical cups) and left the room. Next, either the same person came back or the other adult who hasn't seen the hiding entered to look for the interesting toy. The researchers observed how children responded when asked where the puppet was.
When the person asking the question was the same person who hid the toys, it was less important how babies reacted – the adult would have found the toy on her first try with or without help. However, when the person looking for the toy missed the hiding, and the puppet was behind the building block, babies’ standard pointing gestures could have been misleading. Pointing straight at the puppet is ambiguous in this context: this is how one would refer to the nearest cup as well. However, pointing was infants’ only way to inform their partner: since they sat in a highchair and the cups were out of their reach, they couldn’t simply reveal the toys.
Remarkably, babies came up with multiple ways to signal unambiguously: when they pointed with a raised or bent arm, for example, the adults understood that the puppet should be under the cup that is further away. Babies used these more effortful but clearer forms of pointing more often when the adult was ignorant or mistaken about the puppet’s location. Moreover, infants generally pointed to the target object rather than at the distractor more often when their communicative partner had a higher need for information.
These results demonstrate that 18-month-olds understand the connection between others' knowledge and the value of information. When unambiguity is crucial, infants use the communicative tools at their disposal more precisely, creatively and flexibly. These sophisticated communication skills enable young children to successfully cooperate with their social partners.
Original paper: Tauzin, T., Call, J., Gergely, G. (2024) Infants Produce Optimally Informative Points to Satisfy the Epistemic Needs of Their Communicative Partner. Open Mind 2024; 8: 1228–1246.
