What Is the Baby "Saying"? Adults' Interpretation of Infants' Pointing Gestures

Infants' early pointing gestures predict their language development. One hypothesized mechanism for this relation is that pointing elicits caregivers' responses that facilitate word learning. This contingent-response hypothesis presupposes that adults can accurately interpret the communicative intent underlying infants' points, yet this has not been directly tested. Across three experiments, we examined whether adults can reliably distinguish among five pointing intent categories established in prior research, namely requestive, expressive declarative, spontaneous informative declarative, elicited informative declarative, and interrogative. In Experiment 1, 58 students interpreted infant pointing gestures in 28 video clips, identifying the most prototypical exemplars of each intent. In Experiments 2 and 3, 76 students, 53 U.S. parents, and 38 German parents rated their confidence in each intent for these 5 prototypical clips and reported how they would respond. Across all samples, participants assigned significantly higher confidence to the target intent than to alternatives and reported intent-differentiated responses. We found few differences between students and parents or between American and German parents, suggesting that interpretation of prototypical pointing gestures is not strongly dependent on child-rearing experience or cultural background, though comparisons were limited to two Western societies. These findings establish a key precondition for the contingent-response hypothesis: adults possess the interpretive capacity to provide intent-appropriate input in response to infant pointing.