The Role of Declarative Pointing in Developing a Theory of Mind

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
It has been suggested that the child's capacity to represent and influence another person's attentional state about an object or event in triadic interactions (declarative communication) is an early manifestation of social understanding in the second year of life. This study tested the following predictions: First, in typically developing children declarative pointing emerges later than imperative pointing. Second, the capacity to use declarative pointing is linked to the understanding of other's intentions (i.e., to the capacity to reproduce other's intended acts after seeing failed attempts to perform these acts). The study was conducted in 2 phases. In the first phase, the parents of 133 typically developing infants completed the Questionnaire on Pointing Gesture, which allowed the identification of babies able to use pointing in familiar contexts. Of these children, 40 participated in the experiment and were tested on 2 tasks: a new task designed to elicit production and comprehension of imperative and declarative pointing, and a modified version of Meltzoff's (1995) task designed to assess understanding of others' intentions. Tasks were administered to each participant in 2 sessions carried out at 3‐month intervals. Children were 12 months old on average at the 1st session and 15 months old on average at the 2nd session. Results showed that children produced and understood declarative pointing later than imperative pointing. Furthermore, production of declarative pointing was clearly linked to understanding of others' intentions. No relation was found between production and comprehension of imperative pointing and intention understanding. Implications from the association between declarative pointing and inferring other's intentions are discussed.