Preverbal infants' understanding of referential gestures

In a short-term longitudinal study, 10- and 12-month-old infants' (N = 43) comprehension of referential gestures (gaze- and point- comprehension) was assessed independently in an attention- following task, and a preference-for-novelty task, measuring infants' encoding of actor-goal-relations (cf. Woodward 1998). Consistent with previous findings, marked developmental progress was found in gaze- and point-following between 10 and 12 months, with 12-month-olds approaching ceiling. In contrast, neither 10- nor 12-month-olds responded to a change in relation between actor and object, when the actor looked at or looked and pointed at the target object, whereas at 12 months of age they did, when the actor both looked at and reached for the target. These findings indicate that infants' ability to follow communicative gestures is not initially accompanied by an understanding of the intentional relation between communicator and referent independently of the communicative situation. The findings support the role of early pragmatic scaffolding in caretaker-infant interaction in building such an understanding.

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