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 -