The role of declarative pointing in developing a theory of mind

It is suggested that the child's capacity to represent and influence the other person’s attentional state about an object/event in triadic interactions (declarative communication) is an early manifestation of social understanding in the second year of life. The present study aimed at testing the following predictions. First, in typically developing children declarative pointing gesture 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 two phases. In the first phase, the parents of 133 typically developing infants completed the “Questionnaire on Pointing Gesture”, which allows to identify babies able to use pointing in familiar contexts. Out of these children, 40 participated in the experiment and were tested on two tasks: a new task designed to elicit production/comprehension of imperative and declarative pointing; a modified version of Meltzoff’s task designed to assess understanding of other's intentions. Tasks were administered to each subject in two sessions carried out at 3 months of distance. Children were 12 months old on average at the first session, and 15 months old on average at the second 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 other’s intentions. No relationship was found between production/comprehension of imperative pointing and intention understanding. Implications from the association between declarative pointing and inferring other's intentions are discussed.