Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
Dev Psychol. 2013 Oct;49(10):1898-908. doi: 10.1037/a0031111. Epub 2013 Jan 28.
The present study aims to investigate the interplay of verbal and nonverbal communication with respect to infants' perception of pointing gestures. Infants were presented with still images of pointing hands (cue) in combination with an acoustic stimulus. The communicative content of this acoustic stimulus was varied from being human and communicative to artificial. Saccadic reaction times (SRTs) from the cue to a peripheral target were measured as an indicator of the modulation of covert attention. A significant cueing effect (facilitated SRTs for congruent compared with incongruent trials) was only present in a condition with additional communicative and referential speech. In addition, the size of the cueing effect increased the more human and communicative the acoustic stimulus was. This indicates a beneficial effect of verbal communication on the perception of nonverbal communicative pointing gestures, emphasizing the important role of verbal communication in facilitating social understanding across domains. These findings additionally suggest that human and communicative (ostensive) signals are not qualitatively different from other less social signals but just quantitatively the most attention grabbing among a number of other signals.
本研究旨在探讨言语和非言语交际在婴儿对指点手势感知中的相互作用。研究向婴儿呈现静态的指点手图像（线索），并结合听觉刺激。听觉刺激的交际内容从人为的、非交际性的变化为人类交际性的。从线索到外围目标的扫视反应时间（SRT）被用作隐蔽注意力调节的指标。只有在具有额外交际和指涉性言语的条件下，才会出现显著的线索效应（一致条件下的 SRT 比不一致条件下的 SRT 更快）。此外，听觉刺激越具有人性和交际性，线索效应的大小就越大。这表明言语交际对非言语交际指点手势感知具有有益的影响，强调了言语交际在促进跨领域社会理解方面的重要作用。这些发现还表明，人类交际性（提示性）信号与其他非社会性信号在质上没有区别，只是在数量上是其他许多信号中最引人注目的。
