Bertenthal Bennett I, Boyer Ty W, Harding Samuel
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University.
Department of Psychology, Georgia Southern University.
Dev Psychol. 2014 Aug;50(8):2036-48. doi: 10.1037/a0037152. Epub 2014 Jun 9.
Infants' understanding of a pointing gesture represents a major milestone in their communicative development. The current consensus is that infants are not capable of following a pointing gesture until 9-12 months of age. In this article, we present evidence from 4- and 6-month-old infants challenging this conclusion. Infants were tested with a spatial cueing paradigm in Experiment 1 (500-ms stimulus-target onset asynchrony [SOA]) and Experiment 2 (100-ms SOA). The results revealed that the younger infants shifted their attention in the cued direction when presented with a pointing gesture and with a foil (i.e., same size and shape as pointing gesture) at both SOAs. Older infants shifted their attention only in response to the pointing gesture at 100-ms SOA. Experiment 3 tested infants' preferences for the social stimulus (i.e., pointing gesture) relative to the foil and a non-social stimulus (i.e., an arrow). The results revealed that infants are biased to selectively attend to the pointing gesture. Taken together, these results suggest that 4- and 6-month-old infants are capable of preferentially selecting and following a pointing gesture. It is theorized that this early capacity assists infants in their developing understanding of triadic forms of communication.
婴儿对指示性手势的理解是其交流发展中的一个重要里程碑。目前的共识是，婴儿在9至12个月大之前无法跟随指示性手势。在本文中，我们展示了来自4个月和6个月大婴儿的证据，对这一结论提出了挑战。在实验1（刺激-目标起始异步[SOA]为500毫秒）和实验2（SOA为100毫秒）中，婴儿接受了空间线索范式测试。结果显示，在两个SOA条件下，当呈现指示性手势和一个陪衬物（即与指示性手势大小和形状相同）时，较小的婴儿会将注意力转向提示的方向。较大的婴儿仅在100毫秒SOA时对手势做出反应而转移注意力。实验3测试了婴儿相对于陪衬物和非社交刺激（即箭头）对社交刺激（即指示性手势）的偏好。结果显示，婴儿倾向于选择性地关注指示性手势。综合来看，这些结果表明4个月和6个月大的婴儿能够优先选择并跟随指示性手势。从理论上讲，这种早期能力有助于婴儿在发展过程中理解三元交流形式。
