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Newborn Infants Selectively Attend to Points That Refer to Objects
Alessandra Geraci1, Luca Surian2, Lucia Gabriella Tina3
1Department of Educational Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy.
Developmental Science
|February 11, 2026
Summary
Newborn infants show sensitivity to pointing gestures, but only when the gesture is social and directed towards a target. This suggests an innate understanding of communicative intent in early development.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Recognizing communicative acts is crucial for developing communication skills.
- Newborns respond to ostensive cues like mutual gaze and infant-directed speech.
- Newborns' responses to pointing gestures as ostensive cues remain unexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if 5-day-old newborns are sensitive to pointing gestures.
- To determine if newborns perceive pointing as an ostensive cue.
- To examine the specificity of newborn responses to social and referential pointing.
Main Methods:
- A preferential looking paradigm was used to compare newborn attention to a pointing hand versus a fist.
- Experiments manipulated the presence of a target, the social nature of the pointer, and the direction of movement.
- Four experiments with 5 conditions and 90 newborns were conducted.
Main Results:
- Newborns looked longer at a pointing human hand than a fist, but only when a target object was present.
- Responses were specific to social (human hand) and communicative (referential) pointing.
- No visual preference was observed for non-social or non-referential pointing gestures.
Conclusions:
- Newborn infants demonstrate sensitivity to pointing as a key communicative gesture.
- This sensitivity is specific to pointing that is both social and referential.
- Findings support an experience-independent sensitivity to pointing as an ostensive signal, aligning with evolutionary theories of communication.
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