Fourteen‐Month‐Olds Know What “We” Have Shared in a Special Way

Abstract

People often express excitement to each other when encountering an object that they have shared together previously in some special way. This study investigated whether 14‐month‐old infants know precisely what they have and have not shared in a special way (and with whom). In the experimental condition an adult and infant shared an object (the target) excitedly because it unexpectedly reappeared in several places. They then shared 2 other objects (the distractors) in a more normal fashion. Later, the adult reacted excitedly to a tray containing all 3 objects and then made an ambiguous request for the infant to hand “it” to her. There were 2 control conditions. In 1 of them, a different adult, who knew none of the 3 objects, made the ambiguous request. In the other control condition, the adult who made the request had previously experienced the objects only alone, while the infant looked on unengaged. Infants in the experimental condition chose the target object more often than the distractors and more often than they chose it in either control condition. These results demonstrate that 14‐month‐old infants can identify which one of a set of objects “we”—and not just I or you alone—have had a special experience with in the past.

Why do dogs (Canis familiaris) select the empty container in an observational learning task?

“…It has been argued that human infants are biologically prepared to interpret such cues as expressing the other's overt communicative intention towards them to convey new and relevant information about referents (see Gergely and Csibra 2006;Gergely et al 2007;Csibra and Gergely 2009). Clearly, such early sensitivity to communicative cues may provide a necessary cognitive prerequisite that supports preverbal infants' early emerging competence to engage in different types of triadic interactions, including social learning by imitation (Warneken and Tomasello 2007;Tomasello and Haberl 2003;Moll and Tomasello 2007;Moll et al 2008). Ostensivecommunicative and referential cues guide the infants' attention and influence their inferences and interpretations about the action demonstration so that they will be more willing to imitate unusual and less efficient actions.…”

Prelinguistic Infants, but Not Chimpanzees, Communicate About Absent Entities

“…However, one could also imagine that human beings have the ability to make reference to absent entities even prior to language, and that indeed this ability is a precondition for using linguistic conventions in a displaced manner in the first place. The key test would involve prelinguistic infants, who typically use the pointing gesture quite flexibly for some months before acquiring any conventional language (Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998;Liszkowski, 2006) and who also show evidence of the prerequisite ability to keep track of the common ground they share with other individuals (Moll, Richter, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2008;Saylor & Ganea, 2007). If infants were able to use the pointing gesture to make reference to absent entities in the same basic way as adults (Liszkowski, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2007; but see Gómez, 2007), this would overturn the established view that displaced reference depends on language.…”

Babies open our minds to their minds: How “listening” to infant signs complements and extends our knowledge of infants and their development

“…For example, if an adult and an infant share a particularly exciting experience of a specific object, then share less enthusiasm over other objects, a 14-month-old infant can use this joint emotional experience, or shared common ground, to accurately determine which object the adult wants when he or she excitedly, but ambiguously, asks the infant to hand "it" to him or her (Moll, Richter, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2008; also see Tomasello & Haberl, 2003). Thus, beginning early in their second year of life, children remember and use information about the experiences We know that infants are capable of remembering the experiences they share with others, and can use that information in later interactions, at least in the short-term.…”

“…But before they can use language to refer to out-of-sight concepts, infants can understand adults' references to absent referents (Huttenlocher, 1974). Infants as young as 14 months will keep track of the experiences they have shared with others (Moll et al, 2008), and can use that knowledge to interpret adults' references to absent objects (Saylor & Ganea, 2007). Further, infants will use the pointing gesture to refer to the previous location of a missing object when they have shared an experience of the object in that location with another person (Liszkowski, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2007).…”