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Related Experiment Videos

A new look at infant pointing.

Michael Tomasello1, Malinda Carpenter, Ulf Liszkowski

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. tomas@eva.mpg.de

Child Development
|May 23, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Infants

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Infant pointing is a crucial prelinguistic communication behavior.
  • Understanding the intentionality behind infant gestures is key to cognitive development.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To propose a new theory of infant pointing based on multiple layers of intentionality.
  • To present evidence supporting a rich interpretation of prelinguistic communication and infant social cognition.

Main Methods:

  • Theoretical analysis of infant pointing behavior.
  • Review of existing empirical evidence on infant communication and social skills.

Main Results:

  • Infant pointing at 12 months involves influencing adult mental states.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Pointing relies on uniquely human cooperative skills and shared intentionality.

    • Conclusions:

    • Prelinguistic communication, specifically infant pointing, is deeply social and intentional.
    • Early linguistic abilities are founded on this sophisticated prelinguistic communication platform.