Twelve-month-old infants recognize that speech can communicate unobservable intentions - PubMed (original) (raw)

Comparative Study

. 2012 Aug 7;109(32):12933-7.

doi: 10.1073/pnas.1121057109. Epub 2012 Jul 23.

Affiliations

Comparative Study

Twelve-month-old infants recognize that speech can communicate unobservable intentions

Athena Vouloumanos et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012.

Abstract

Much of our knowledge is acquired not from direct experience but through the speech of others. Speech allows rapid and efficient transfer of information that is otherwise not directly observable. Do infants recognize that speech, even if unfamiliar, can communicate about an important aspect of the world that cannot be directly observed: a person's intentions? Twelve-month-olds saw a person (the Communicator) attempt but fail to achieve a target action (stacking a ring on a funnel). The Communicator subsequently directed either speech or a nonspeech vocalization to another person (the Recipient) who had not observed the attempts. The Recipient either successfully stacked the ring (Intended outcome), attempted but failed to stack the ring (Observable outcome), or performed a different stacking action (Related outcome). Infants recognized that speech could communicate about unobservable intentions, looking longer at Observable and Related outcomes than the Intended outcome when the Communicator used speech. However, when the Communicator used nonspeech, infants looked equally at the three outcomes. Thus, for 12-month-olds, speech can transfer information about unobservable aspects of the world such as internal mental states, which provides preverbal infants with a tool for acquiring information beyond their immediate experience.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Procedure. During Familiarization trials (Upper Left), the Communicator attempted but failed to stack a ring on a funnel that already held a ring. During the Pretest trial (Upper Center), the Recipient interacted neutrally with all objects. In the Test trial (Upper Right), the Communicator vocalized, either speech or a cough, then the Recipient either performed the Intended (Lower Left), Observable (Lower Center), or Related (Lower Right) outcome.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Results. Mean looking times and SEM for the Intended (white bars), Observable (gray bars), and Related (black bars) outcomes for Speech (Left) and Cough (Right) vocalizations. *significance at P < 0.05.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.

Results of conditions ruling out the generic knowledge hypothesis. Shown are the mean looking times and SEM for the Intended (white bars) and Observable (gray bars) outcomes for the original conditions in which the Communicator both acted on the objects and spoke (Left) and the conditions in which the Actor acted on the objects and the Communicator subsequently spoke (Right). *significance at P < 0.05.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Clark HH. Using Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ Press; 1996.
    1. Gelman SA. Learning from others: Children’s construction of concepts. Annu Rev Psychol. 2009;60:115–140. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Searle JR. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ Press; 1969.
    1. Sperber D, Wilson D. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell; 1986.
    1. Ganea PA, Harris PL. Not doing what you are told: Early perseverative errors in updating mental representations via language. Child Dev. 2010;81:457–463. - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources