Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 23, 2026
Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
Dynamic pointing triggers shifts of visual attention in young infants
Katharina J Rohlfing1, Matthew R Longo, Bennett I Bertenthal
1Emergentist Semantics Group, Bielefeld University, Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), Universitätsstrasse 21–23, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany. kjr@uni-bielefeld.de
Insights
Infants as young as 4.5 months can follow dynamic pointing gestures, not static ones. This early sensitivity to the motion and direction of pointing aids in understanding communication.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Infant Perception
Background:
- Pointing is a deictic gesture crucial for social interaction and learning.
- Previous research indicates infants typically follow pointing gestures around 10-13 months.
- Early sensitivity to eye gaze suggests potential for earlier pointing comprehension.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if infants younger than 10 months demonstrate sensitivity to pointing gestures.
- To determine if dynamic or static pointing elicits attention shifts in young infants.
- To clarify the specific cues (hand posture, motion) infants use to interpret pointing.
Main Methods:
- Three experiments were conducted with 4.5- and 6.5-month-old infants.
- A technique was employed to minimize the difficulty of disengaging fixation from a pointing hand.
- Infants' visual attention shifts were measured in response to dynamic and static pointing gestures.
Main Results:
- Infants as young as 4.5 months showed systematic visual attention shifts towards dynamic pointing gestures.
- Static pointing gestures did not elicit a similar attention shift in the studied age groups.
- The direction of hand motion was necessary, but not sufficient, for orienting attention; motion in the same direction as the pointing finger was key.
Conclusions:
- Infants possess an innate preparedness to orient towards the distal referent of a pointing gesture.
- Dynamic motion is a critical cue for infants' attention to pointing.
- This early sensitivity likely facilitates the learning of pointing's communicative function.
Abstract:
Pointing, like eye gaze, is a deictic gesture that can be used to orient the attention of another person towards an object or an event. Previous research suggests that infants first begin to follow a pointing gesture between 10 and 13 months of age. We investigated whether sensitivity to pointing could be seen at younger ages employing a technique recently used to show early sensitivity to perceived eye gaze. Three experiments were conducted with 4.5- and 6.5-month-old infants. Our first goal was to examine whether these infants could show a systematic response to pointing by shifting their visual attention in the direction of a pointing gesture when we eliminated the difficulty of disengaging fixation from a pointing hand. The results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that a dynamic, but not a static, pointing gesture triggers shifts of visual attention in infants as young as 4.5 months of age. Our second goal was to clarify whether this response was based on sensitivity to the directional posture of the pointing hand, the motion of the pointing hand, or both. The results from Experiment 3 suggest that the direction of motion is necessary but not sufficient to orient infants' attention toward a distal target. Infants shifted their attention in the direction of the pointing finger, but only when the hand was moving in the same direction. These results suggest that infants are prepared to orient to the distal referent of a pointing gesture which likely contributes to their learning the communicative function of pointing.
