Korean 7-month-old infants can understand pointing gesture as goal-directed when some linguistic cue is provided (언어 정보를 이용한 만 7개월 한국 영아들의 가리키기 행동의 목표 지향성 이해 능력)

LEE JI HYUN (이지현); Hyun Joo SONG (송현주); 김민영

Korean 7-month-old infants can understand pointing gesture as goal-directed when some linguistic cue is provided

THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
2012, 25(1), pp.63-75
Publisher : The Korean Society For Developmental Psychology
Research Area : Social Science > Psychological Science

LEE JI HYUN ¹, Hyun Joo SONG ¹, 김민영 ²

¹연세대학교
²(주) 휴노

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The present study examined whether Korean 7-month-old infants can understand the goal-directedness of others’ pointing gestures when linguistic information is provided. Korean 7-month-old infants were familiarized with an event in which an actor pointed to one of the two novel objects with her index finger after saying a novel label, “mido”(Experimental condition) or a Korean exclamatory expression “woowa” (Control condition). After the positions of the two objects were switched, the infants watched the actor pointing to the new-goal object (new-goal event) or the old-goal object (old-goal event) in the test trials. The infants in the experimental condition looked significantly longer at the new-goal event than the old-goal event. The infants in the control condition looked at the new-goal and the old-goal events about equally, indicating that other linguistic cues such as an exclamation of surprise do not facilitate infants’ understanding of goal-directedness of others’ pointing gestures. The results suggest that seven-month-old infants understand the goal-directedness of the actor’s pointing gesture when some linguistic cue is provided even though they cannot produce their own goal-directed pointing gestures yet.

KEYWORDS

pointing behaior, linguistic cue, goal-directedness

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.

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