Communicative hand-waving gestures facilitate object learning in preverbal infants

The theory of natural pedagogy has proposed that infants can use ostensive signals, including eye contact, infant-directed speech, and contingency to learn from others. However, the role of bodily gestures, such as hand-waving, in social learning has been largely ignored. To address this gap in the literature, this study sought to determine whether 4-month-old infants exhibited a preference for horizontal or vertical (control) hand-waving gestures. We also examined whether horizontal hand-waving gestures followed by pointing facilitated the process of object learning in 9-month-old infants. Results showed that 4-month-old infants preferred horizontal hand-waving gestures to vertical hand-waving gestures, even when featural and contextual information were removed. Furthermore, horizontal hand-waving gestures induced identity encoding for cued objects, whereas vertical gestures did not. These findings highlight the role of communicative intent embedded in bodily movements and indicate that hand-waving can serve as a new type of ostensive signal.