Infants' Use of Shared Experience in Declarative Pointing.

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Infant Communication

Background:

• Declarative pointing is a key communicative act in early development.
• Previous research suggests infants point to novel items to share information.
• The role of shared experiences in guiding infant pointing is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if infants use past shared experiences with specific individuals when making declarative pointing decisions.
• To determine the age at which infants track shared experiences for communicative purposes.
• To explore whether declarative pointing is used for familiar, shared items, not exclusively novel ones.

Main Methods:

• 14- and 18-month-old infants participated in an experiment involving shared referent experiences with an adult.
• Infants were subsequently presented with pictures and their declarative pointing behaviors were observed.
• Pointing preferences were analyzed based on whether the referent was previously shared with the specific adult present.

Main Results:

• 18-month-olds preferentially engaged in declarative pointing towards pictures of referents they had previously shared with a specific adult.
• This effect was specific to the adult with whom the experience was shared; pointing did not increase for a different adult.
• 14-month-olds showed mixed results, suggesting developing abilities in tracking shared experiences.

Conclusions:

• Infants by 18 months can accurately track shared experiences with specific individuals.
• These tracked experiences influence infants' communicative decisions, specifically declarative pointing.
• Declarative pointing can serve to highlight "familiar" or "shared" items, expanding beyond the notion of pointing only to novel "new" things.