Fakultät für Psychologie und Bewegungswissenschaft, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Dev Sci. 2019 Nov;22(6):e12832. doi: 10.1111/desc.12832. Epub 2019 Apr 26.
Several interaction-based and looking-time studies suggest that 1-year-old infants understand the referential nature of deictic gestures. However, these studies have not unequivocally established that referential gestures induce object expectations in infants prior to encountering a referent object, and have thus remained amenable to simpler attentional highlighting interpretations. The current study tested whether nonlinguistic referential communication induces object expectations in infants by using a novel pupil dilation paradigm. In Experiment 1, 12-month-olds watched videos of a protagonist who either pointed communicatively toward an occluder in front of her or remained still. At test, the occluder opened to reveal one of two outcomes: an empty surface or a toy. Results showed that infants' pupils were larger for the unexpected outcome of an empty surface following a point compared to the control condition (an empty surface following no point). These differences were not caused by differences in looking times or directions. In Experiment 2, an attention-directing nonsocial control cue replaced the referential communication. The cue did direct 12-month-olds' attention to the occluder, but it did not induce an object expectation. In Experiment 3, we tested 8-month-olds in the setting of Experiment 1. In contrast to 12-month-olds, 8-month-olds did not reveal object expectations following communication. Findings demonstrate that communicative pointing acts induce object expectations at 12 months of age, but not at 8 months of age, and that these expectations are specific to a referential-communicative as opposed to an attention-directing nonsocial cue.
几项基于互动和注视时间的研究表明，1 岁婴儿理解指示手势的指称性质。然而，这些研究并没有明确确定，在遇到参照对象之前，参照手势会引起婴儿对对象的期望，因此仍然可以用更简单的注意力突出解释。本研究通过使用一种新的瞳孔扩张范式来检验非语言参照交流是否会引起婴儿的对象期望。在实验 1 中，12 个月大的婴儿观看了一个主角的视频，主角要么指向她面前的遮挡物进行交流，要么保持静止。在测试中，遮挡物打开，显示出两个结果之一：一个空表面或一个玩具。结果表明，与没有指向的控制条件（没有指向时出现空表面）相比，婴儿在看到指向后，对于空表面的意外结果（一个空表面），瞳孔会更大。这些差异不是由注视时间或方向的差异引起的。在实验 2 中，一个指向注意的非社交控制线索取代了参照交流。该线索确实引导了 12 个月大的婴儿注意到遮挡物，但并没有引起对象期望。在实验 3 中，我们在实验 1 的设置中测试了 8 个月大的婴儿。与 12 个月大的婴儿不同，8 个月大的婴儿在交流后没有表现出对象期望。研究结果表明，交际性的指向行为会引起 12 个月大婴儿的对象期望，但不会引起 8 个月大婴儿的对象期望，而且这些期望是特定于参照交际的，而不是指向注意力的非社交线索。
