Intentional Communication

Question 1

Figure from Lock (2001), comprising four panels. In top, left panel, a one-year-old girl reached ineffectively for a distant apple. In the top, right panel, she turned to her mother (offscreen), who was not attending to the child, and the girl vocalised, displaying a putative attention-getting signal. In the bottom, left panel, the girl monitored her mother, and when the mother turned to look at the child, in the bottom, right panel, the girl pointed to the distant apple, in a clear request for the mother to retrieve the apple for her.

What does this show about children this age?

Answer 1

Like many children of her age, this child acted as if she had a goal in advance of her actions, she tactically chose auditory (vocalisation) and visual (pointing) signals to match the attentional availability of her mother, and in the process, she alternated her gaze from the referent (apple) to the mother (recipient). Babies of this age will also persist in or repeat their signals if the recipient is unresponsive and even elaborate their signals in the face of recipient inaction.

Question 2

Intentional communication:

• definition
• what is pre-intentional?
• what is intentional?

Answer 2

Intentional Communication: Communication that has a discernable topic. It is topic. It is oriented to real or conceptual objects or events.

Pre-intentional is expressive (crying, laughing, babbling).

Intentional is denotative, or about something (words, pointing, reaching arms up to
be picked up)

Question 3

Communication development in first year:

Vocal and manual gestures

Answer 3

Vocal
- Production Production
- Non-speech vocal communication
(cries, laughter, squeals)
- Speech and speech-like vocalizations
(babbling, first words)
- Perception
- Phonemic discriminations

Manual Gestures

Production of intentional gestures: pointing, begging, requests to be picked up.

Question 4

Development of Intentional Communication:

What is the typical timing of various communication milestones over the first 15 months?

Answer 4

0-2 Shared alertness (reflexes)
2-6 Interpersonal engagement (Primary Intersubjectivity)
6-9 Joint object involvement (Epoch of Games)
9-10 Comprehends pointing, near objects (Secondary Intersubjectivity) Younger infants (eg. 6 months) fixate pointing hand; Attempts at speech
11-13 productive pointing, relatively low levels of orientating towards social agent
12 First words
14-15 Productive pointing with visual checking of companions.
Comprehends pointing, far objects

Question 5

Figure from Adamson & Bakeman, 1991
Figure depicting changes in the relationships between infant and mother in relation to objects, all embedded in a cultural surround.

Answer 5

At left, the baby is depicted as not really separated from the mother over the first 2 months of life, where they are depicted as two overlapping circles. Objects exist in the environment, but they are not pulled into the relationships between infant and mother. In the middle the infant and mother are depicted as two circles separated from each other with lines of communication extending between the two of them; this represents the early, dyadic focus of communication in mother-infant dyads from 2 to 6 months of age. In the panel at right, labeled 6+ months, both infants and mothers now engage with objects during communication.

Question 6

Schematic of Experimental Arrangement

Answer 6

Diagram of experimental arrangement from an unpublished experiment by Leavens and Todd, setting up the video to follow. An infant is seated in a high
chair next to their mother, who are sitting in a chair. Across the room, at a distance of 2.5 metres, are two dolls that can be animated from a separate control room.

Question 7

Schematic of Experimental Arrangement:
Six months

Answer 7

In this video clip, a mother is seated with her 6-month-old baby girl, as one of the dolls is animated (indicated by a light appearing in a small, black panel above the baby’s head. The child looks at the doll, the child turns to look at the mother, but makes no apparent attempt to communicate about the events. The childseems to passively take in the animation of the doll.

Question 8

Schematic of Experimental Arrangement:
12 months

Answer 8

In this video clip, a mother is seated next to her 12-month-old child. In contrast to the behaviour of the six-month-old, this child is pointing to dolls before the
experimenters are even out of the room. One experimenter waves “bye-bye” to the girl on her way out, and the child responds with a vigorous series of waves in return. Upon animation of the doll, the child pulls her arms into herself, and then rapidly deploys a large, ballistic pointing gesture at the animated doll,
accompanied by a large, open-mouth smile.

Question 9

Pointing to Request (protoimperative)

Answer 9

Figure from Lock (2001), comprising four panels. Here, labels are added to the four panels, to indicate key events in this typical example of intentional communication.

Top left panel: a one-year-old girl reached ineffectively for a distant apple.
Top right panel: she turned to her mother
(offscreen), who was not attending to the child, and the girl vocalised, displaying a putative attention-getting signal.
Bottom left panel: the girl monitored her mother, and when the mother turned to look at the child.
Bottom right panel: the girl pointed to the distant apple, in a clear request for the mother to retrieve the apple for her.
Like many children of her age, this child acted as if she had a goal in advance of her actions, she tactically chose auditory (vocalisation) and visual (pointing) signals to match the attentional availability of her mother, and in the process, she alternated her gaze from the referent (apple) to the mother (recipient). Babies of this age will also persist in or repeat their signals if the recipient is unresponsive and even elaborate their signals in the face of recipient inaction.

Question 10

Pointing to Comment (protodeclarative)

Answer 10

Assumed cognitive prerequisites of protoimperative pointing

A child might point to a doll located out of reach on a table and look back-and forth between his mother and the doll. The alleged goal is delivery of the toy, and this vignette displays children’s developing ability to manipulate people in goal directed sequences of communicative behaviour. Traditionally, this behaviour has been interpreted as an example of means-ends reasoning; here, the means is the caregiver, and the end is the attainment of the doll.

A child held in his mother’s arms points to an unknown referent in the distance, in an apparent protodeclarative gesture.

Question 11

Protoimperative
Goal, means, reinforcer

Answer 11

Goal: delivery of food/ object
Means: social partner

Reinforcer= delivery of item
Cognitive prerequisites: Expectation that social partner will deliver requested items, based on past experience; means-ends reasoning

Question 12

Assumed cognitive prerequisites of protodeclarative pointing.

Answer 12

A child might point to an event distant to itself and its mother and look back-and forth between his mother and the event. There are two major, contradictory
theoretical interpretations of this behaviour. In the Lean version, depicted in this
slide, the alleged goal is infant-directed affective behaviour; the child is assumed to be using the distant event as a means to obtain some response from his mother. In this lean interpretation, the means is the distant event, and the end is the attainment a pleasing response from the caregiver. The Lean interpretation is that this is means-ends reasoning, just like in protodeclarative pointing, but with different means and towards a different end.

Question 13

Protodeclaratives: Lean Interpretation (eg. Moore & Corkum, 1994)
Goal, reinforcer, cognitive prerequisites

Answer 13

Goal: Affective response from caregiver (eg. smiling)
Reinforcer= Emotional signal (eg. smile)
Cognitive prerequisities: expectation that social partner will exhibit positive emotion, based on past experience; means-ends reasoning.

Question 14

Protodeclaratives: Rich Interpretation (e.g., Tomasello, 1995)

Answer 14

Figure depicting the assumed cognitive prerequisites of protodeclarative pointing.
A child might point to an event distant to itself and its mother and look back-andforth between his mother and the event. In this slide, the Rich interpretation is depicted. According to this theoretical perspective, the child is aware that the mother has a separate psychological perspective and uses its pointing gesture to influence the contents of his mother’s mind. This is taken as evidence for an early manifestation of a kind of theory of mind in children as young as 12 months of age.

Question 15

Protodeclaratives: Rich Interpretation (e.g., Tomasello, 1995)
Goal, reinforcer, cognitive prerequisite

Answer 15

Goal: Joint attention to distal object
Reinforcer= successful joint att.
Cognitive prerequisite: ability to represent others as beings with attentional foci ie, at least second-order representation thought

Question 16

Rich Interpretation

Answer 16

The a child begins to point to objects just to share attention with them, the child has a psychological relationship to the object they’re sharing attention to

Question 17

What are the 3 Theoretical Perspectives on Pointing?

Answer 17

1. Nativist (maturational, motivational)
2. Cognitive (computational, representational)
3. Social learning (operant)

Question 18

Butterworth and Pointing:
A Nativist Theory

Answer 18

“human index- “human index-finger pointing is biologically based finger pointing is biologically based and species specific” (Butterworth, 2003, p. 391).

I.e., pointing is an evolutionary adaptation for definite reference in humans and is a functional precursor to linguistic reference. Before we can identify topics with words, we use gestures.

Question 19

Differences in the hand anatomies of humans and their nearest living relatives (chimpanzees)

What did Butterworth believe that these differences in grip preferences contribute to?

Answer 19

1- a drawing of a human hand appears next to a drawing of a chimpanzee hand, both hands oriented with the palm up (supine). The chimpanzee hand has a very much smaller thumb, and because the chimpanzee’s fingers are much longer than a human’s, the thumb sits very far back from the fingertips.

2- a drawing of a human left hand viewed from the side in a classic precision grip—the tips of the thumb and the index finger are held together.

3- a photograph of a chimpanzee reaching to grasp a grasp from a human—instead of grabbing the
grape with a human-like precision grape, this chimpanzee holds the grape against its extended thumb and its curled index finger.

Butterworth believed that these differences in grip preferences contribute to differences in pointing postures.

Question 20

What is Darwin’s hypothesis which is called the Principle of Antithesis?

Answer 20

Opposite body postures expressed opposite emotions.
Eg. dog with tail up, limbs full length- aggressive stance where as the same dog with its tail held
down, the limbs are flexed, lowering the overall height of the dog, and ears are flattened against the skull, representing a submissive posture.

Question 21

Explain Butterworth’s (2001) theory

Answer 21

Index finger point is the postural antithesis of the pincer grip (precision)

Whole-hand point is the postural antithesis of the power grip (power)

Question 22

What is one claim in support of the Nativist hypothesis?

Answer 22

Apes in the wild do not point. While it is extremely rare, it has been observed, and this videoclip depicts
a young chimpanzee approaching an observer’s camera, becoming startled for an unknown reason, and then retreating rapidly towards her mother, stopping briefly to gesture in the direction of the observer.

Question 23

What did Povinelli and Davis (1994) argue?

Answer 23

Human hands were biomechanically poised to point with index fingers.

An anaesthetised chimpanzee hand is shown in a relaxed posture, where the arm is held vertically up, the hand relaxes at the wrist and all four fingers are lined up with each other.
In humans, in this same position, usually the index finger sits proud of the other fingers, although this does not seem to be true for all people
(personal observations).

Question 24

List 3 critiques of the Nativist View

Answer 24

1. Depends upon rearing history–language-trained apes point overwhelmingly with their index fingers
2. Pointing with the whole hand is a widespread human behaviour, too
3. Apes point with their index fingers, too, despite anatomical differences.

Question 25

Critique of the Nativist View:
1. Depends upon rearing history–language-trained apes point overwhelmingly with their index fingers

Answer 25

Evidence against the nativist perspective. At right is a data graph from Leavens and Hopkins (1999) showing that while institutionalised chimpanzees prefer to
point with their whole hands, in contrast, language-trained or home-reared chimpanzees point preferentially with their index fingers.

Question 26

Critique of the Nativist View:
2. Pointing with the whole hand is a widespread human behaviour, too

Answer 26

Another criticism of the nativist view: humans all over the world point with their whole hands, sometimes.

Drawing of a man in Naples, pointing with
his index finger and then, shortly later, pointing with his whole hand.

Photograph of an Australian aborigine pointing off into the distance with his whole hand.

A drawing of two variations of human whole hand pointing, first with all fingers extended and second with just the thumb and first two fingers extended, with ring and pinkie fingers curled back into the palm.

A photograph of an Australian aborigine woman sitting in the passenger seat of a car and pointing to her right with her whole hand while giving directions.

Question 27

Critique of the Nativist View:
Apes point with their index fingers, too, despite anatomical differences.

Answer 27

Continuing the critique of the nativist view, at top, left, is a photograph of Merv, a young adult chimpanzee pointing with his index finger through some cage mesh (from Leavens and Hopkins, 1998). At right is a photograph of a female chimpanzee pointing with her index finger at something in the distance (personal communication from Amy Pollick). At bottom, left, is repeat depiction of a chimpanzee hand and a human hand from Povinelli and Davis (1994), just to underscore that, despite the differences in hand anatomy and in the resting posture of the index finger between humans and chimpanzees, there is no physical impediment to pointing with the index finger by chimpanzees.

Question 28

The Cognitive or Representational View

Answer 28

“[Imperative and declarative pointing with gaze alternation, social referencing, and imitation of actions] can . . . be seen to rely on the
understanding of others as intentional agents, each of whom has their own intentional and attentional agenda” (Tomasello) agenda”

Question 29

What are the assumed cognitive prerequisites of protodeclarative pointing

Answer 29

A child might point to an event distant to itself and its mother and look back-andforth between his mother and the event. In this slide, the Rich interpretation is depicted. According to this theoretical perspective, the child is aware that the mother has a separate psychological perspective and uses its pointing gesture to influence the contents of his mother’s mind. This is taken as evidence for an early manifestation of a kind of theory of mind in children as young as 12 months of age.

Even babies before they have an understanding that others staring in a psychological relationship with their shared environment.

Question 30

Liszkowski et al. (2004)
Procedure

Answer 30

• A baby sits at a small table, with her caregiver seated to her left and an experimenter sitting to her right.
• On the opposite side of the room is a large series of panels with covers that slide away, showing to the child interesting objects.
• Children were administered 10 trials each in one of four conditions.

Question 31

Liszkowski et al. (2004)
List the 4 conditions

Answer 31

1) Joint Attention: if the baby pointed to the object, the experimenter turned to look at the indicated object and displayed positive verbal reactions.

2) Face condition: if the baby pointed, the experimenter looked at the child and displayed positive emotion, but did not turn to look at the object.

3) Event condition: the experimenter turned to look at the object if the baby pointed, but displayed only neutral emotion.

4) Ignore: the experimenter ignored the baby’s pointing gestures.

Question 32

Liszkowski et al. (2004)
Results

Answer 32

Babies in the Joint Attention condition were less likely to repeat their pointing, compared to babies in the other conditions. Thus, they seemed satisfied when the experimenter looked at the object to which the babies pointed and expressed positive emotion.

This was interpreted as evidence that babies understand that others have an understanding of the independent psychological perspectives of their social partners.

Full joint condition elicited fewer points than the others

Question 33

What does Liszkowski et al. (2004) study suggest?

Answer 33

This study suggests that infants at 12 months of age do understand something about attention and the independent attentional perspective of others when sharing attention and interest.

Question 34

Leaner Interpretations of Declaratives

Answer 34

“the infant may understand that the point will tend to lead to an adult head turn and an interesting subsequent response from the adult”
(Moore & Corkum, 1994, p. 362, emphasis added)

Experimental prediction based on Learning Models: pointing infants will expect both adult head turns and infant-directed affective responses.

“In the conditions not involving joint attention, infants repeated their point more often. . . . so they were persisting in their pointing behavior hoping eventually to obtain the desired response” (Liszkowski,Carpenter, Henning, Striano, & Tomasello, 2004, p. 305)

My conclusion: The findings data are consistent with both learning and representational accounts.

Question 35

Learner Interpretations of Declaratives:
However, what did Moore and Corkum (1994) suggest?

Answer 35

Suggested that pointing babies could learn, through simple operant conditioning, to expect exactly what Liszkowski et al. later found in 2004: an adult head turn and an interesting subsequent response from an adult. Thus, Liszkowski’s findings do not really challenge a learning based theoretical interpretation.

Question 36

What does a figure depicting the assumed cognitive prerequisites of protoimperative pointing show?

Answer 36

A child might point to a doll located out of reach on a table and look back-and forth between his mother and the doll. The alleged goal is delivery of the toy, and this vignette displays children’s developing ability to manipulate people in goal directed sequences of communicative behaviour. Traditionally, this behaviour has been interpreted as an example of means-ends reasoning; here, the means is the caregiver, and the end is the attainment of the doll.

Question 37

The Learning Perspective

Answer 37

“According to this view, babies exhibit protodeclar because their caregivers reliably respond with intense bursts of positive emotion to the babies’ communicative efforts, such as smiling and verbalizing with very high pitch contours (motherese). . . . if the early motivations for babies’ pointing behavior in both protoimperative and protodeclarative contexts is the manipulation of the behavior of their social partners (delivery of objects in protoimperative pointing and elicitation of emotional engagement in protodeclarative pointing), then there is no compelling logical basis to postulate fundamentally different psychological processes underlying the two kinds of pointing”

Russell, & Hopkins, 2005, pp. 292- Leavens, 2012a,b, 2018, 2021; Leavens & Clark, 2017; Leavens et al., 2008, 2009).

Question 38

What does a series of videos show about doll activation?

Answer 38

• -160 milliseconds (ms) prior to doll activation.
  Twelve-month-old baby looking straight ahead, mother looking at baby.
• The exact moment the doll is activated (0 ms): baby still looking straight ahead and mother looking at baby.
• Now 720 ms after doll activation, both baby
  and mother looking at animated doll.
• Now 2.80 seconds (s) after doll activation, baby is still looking at the doll, but beginning to lift her right arm from the arm of the high chair.
  Mother is now watching the baby
• Now 4.80 s after doll activation, baby’s right arm is fully retracted towards her mid-section, still looking at doll, and mother still looking at baby.
• Now exactly 6.00 s after doll activation, baby is still looking at doll, and her right hand begins a rapid forward extension. Mother looking at baby.
• Now 6.32 s after doll activation, baby is pointing at doll, big smile on her face, mother still looking at baby.
• Now 6.40 s after doll activation, baby’s point has reached maximum extent, very large smile, and now the mother is looking at the doll, apparently following the baby’s point. This is classic joint attention. Photodeclarative point
• Now 7.12 s after doll after doll activation, baby’s right arm has been retracted and is resting on support bar of high chair.
  Baby no longer looking at the doll—gaze seems to be in transition. Mother has returned to looking at the baby
• Now 7.68 s after doll activation, mother and baby are looking at each and smiling. According to lean interpretation, this is the goal of the pointing, the intense positive affect. Goal= Emotional Exchange?
• Now 18.80s after doll activation, baby looks at mother who is now looking at the previously activated doll. This is the first time the baby could see the mother looking at the doll. The intense positive emotion displayed by both parties has substantially dissipated to a neutral tone. If the goal of the baby was to manipulate the mother’s state of mind, why is the first confirmation that the mother has seen the doll accompanied by such a neutral affective tone? Goal= Direct Mother’s Attention to Doll?

Question 39

What is the difference in affective tone between doll and pointing?

Answer 39

7.68s after Doll
1.28s after Point

18.80s after Doll
12.40s after Point

Moment of first mutual gaze after doll activation at top of slide, compared with moment of first time baby sees mother looking at doll at bottom of slide. The difference in affective tone is obvious.

Question 40

Putting the “Joy” into Joint Attention

Answer 40

Babies (9-18 months) express positive emotion during joint object play with their mothers (Adamson & Bakeman, 1985)

Babies (20 & 22 months) express more positive emotiuon during joint attention than when requesting objects. (Kasari, Sigman, Mundy, & Yirmiya, 1990; Mundy, Kasari, Sigman, 1992)

Babies’ (6-18 months) parents synchronise their own smiles with their own pointing gestures when they point for their babies (leavens, Sansone, Burfield, Lightfoot, O’Hara, & Todd, 2014)