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Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm
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18-month-olds comprehend indirect communicative acts.

Cornelia Schulze1, Michael Tomasello2

  • 1University of Erfurt, Germany.

Cognition
|December 16, 2014
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Young children understand indirect communication. Even at 18 months, they infer social goals from ostensive actions, not just direct ones, showing advanced cognitive development.

Keywords:
Early communicationGesture comprehensionInfant cognitionIntention-readingRelevance inferenceSocial understanding

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Young children infer communicative intentions from referential acts like pointing.
  • Previous research focused on inferential acts with close proximity between action and goal.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if young children can infer communicative goals from more distant, indirect referential acts.
  • To examine the role of ostensive signaling in understanding indirect requests.

Main Methods:

  • Tested 18- and 26-month-old children in a task requiring an indirect request.
  • Compared responses to ostensive key presentation versus non-ostensive (accidental or self-inspection) key presentation.

Main Results:

  • Children of both ages understood the ostensive key presentation as an indirect request to use it.
  • They did not interpret non-ostensive key presentations (accidental or self-inspection) as communicative acts.

Conclusions:

  • Young children infer social goals from indirect communicative acts, not just direct ones.
  • Ostensive signaling is crucial for children to understand communicative intent in indirect actions.