The social-cognitive basis of infants’ reference to absent entities
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The social-cognitive basis of infants’ reference to absent entities. / Bohn, Manuel; Zimmermann, Luise; Call, Josep et al.
In: Cognition, Vol. 177, 01.08.2018, p. 41-48.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The social-cognitive basis of infants’ reference to absent entities
AU - Bohn, Manuel
AU - Zimmermann, Luise
AU - Call, Josep
AU - Tomasello, Michael
N1 - Funding Information: We thank Benjamin Brückner, Kristina Kellermann, Sarah Peoples, Nina Willhardt, Alexandra Kartashova, Franziska Zenner, Hannah Streck, Georg Keller, Felix Haiduk and Elena Rossi for their support during data collection, Marike Schreiber for preparing the figures, Lara Wintzer and Anja Ibes for reliability coding, Roger Mundry for statistical advice, Gregor Stöber for his valuable idea for the setup in experiment 2 and all children and their parents for participation. Manuel Bohn was supported by a scholarship of the German National Academic Foundation and Josep Call was supported by the “SOMICS” ERC-Synergy grant (nr. 609819). Publisher Copyright: © 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/8/1
Y1 - 2018/8/1
N2 - Recent evidence suggests that infants as young as 12 month of age use pointing to communicate about absent entities. The tacit assumption underlying these studies is that infants do so based on tracking what their interlocutor experienced in a previous shared interaction. The present study addresses this assumption empirically. In three experiments, 12-month-old infants could request additional desired objects by pointing to the location in which these objects were previously located. We systematically varied whether the adult from whom infants were requesting had previously experienced the former content of the location with the infant. Infants systematically adjusted their pointing to the now empty location to what they experienced with the adult previously. These results suggest that infants’ ability to communicate about absent referents is based on an incipient form of common ground.
AB - Recent evidence suggests that infants as young as 12 month of age use pointing to communicate about absent entities. The tacit assumption underlying these studies is that infants do so based on tracking what their interlocutor experienced in a previous shared interaction. The present study addresses this assumption empirically. In three experiments, 12-month-old infants could request additional desired objects by pointing to the location in which these objects were previously located. We systematically varied whether the adult from whom infants were requesting had previously experienced the former content of the location with the infant. Infants systematically adjusted their pointing to the now empty location to what they experienced with the adult previously. These results suggest that infants’ ability to communicate about absent referents is based on an incipient form of common ground.
KW - Common ground
KW - Communication
KW - Displacement
KW - Pointing
KW - Social cognition
KW - Psychology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85045003169&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.03.024
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.03.024
M3 - Journal articles
C2 - 29631197
AN - SCOPUS:85045003169
VL - 177
SP - 41
EP - 48
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
SN - 0010-0277
ER -