Young children follow pointing over words in interpreting acts of reference.
Adults refer young children's attention to things in two basic ways: through the use of pointing (and other deictic gestures) and words (and other linguistic conventions). In the current studies, we referred young children (2- and 4-year-olds) to things in conflicting ways, that is, by pointing to one object while indicating linguistically (in some way) a different object. In Study 1, a novel word was put into competition with a pointing gesture in a mutual exclusivity paradigm; that is, with a known and a novel object in front of the child, the adult pointed to the known object (e.g. a cup) while simultaneously requesting 'the modi'. In contrast to the findings of Jaswal and Hansen (2006), children followed almost exclusively the pointing gesture. In Study 2, when a known word was put into competition with a pointing gesture - the adult pointed to the novel object but requested 'the car'- children still followed the pointing gesture. In Study 3, the referent of the pointing gesture was doubly contradicted by the lexical information - the adult pointed to a known object (e.g. a cup) but requested 'the car'- in which case children considered pointing and lexical information equally strong. Together, these findings suggest that in disambiguating acts of reference, young children at both 2 and 4 years of age rely most heavily on pragmatic information (e.g. in a pointing gesture), and only secondarily on lexical conventions and principles.
Grassmann
Susanne
S
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. grassmann@eva.mpg.de
Tomasello
Michael
M
D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012016:Reference Values; D014825:Vocabulary