Definition
The comprehension of human gestures, specifically points, as referential and communicative symbols.
Introduction
The main question to be addressed in this chapter is are nonhuman animals capable of understanding human-given points as communicative symbols? Are they capable of understanding the referential intention of the act of pointing? To truly answer these questions, it is first necessary to discuss how humans grow to understand the referential and communicative nature of points. Many argue that this capacity is not innate but develops gradually as the child gains experience with both seeing and performing the action as well as with the advances in theory of mind that occur with age (Woodward and Guajardo 2002). To be able to successfully follow a point given by another individual, the point-receiver must first understand that the point is...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Tomasello, M., Call, J., & Gluckman, A. (1997). Comprehension of novel communicative signs by apes and human children. Child Development, 68(6), 1067.
Gácsi, M., Gyoöri, B., Virányi, Z., Kubinyi, E., Range, F., Belényi, B., & Miklósi, Á. (2009). Explaining dog wolf differences in utilizing human pointing gestures: Selection for synergistic shifts in the development of some social skills. PloS One, 4(8), e6584. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006584.
Hare, B., Brown, M., Williamson, C., & Tomasello, M. (2002). The domestication of social cognition in dogs. Science, 298(5598), 1634–1636. doi:10.1126/science.1072702.
Lyn, H., Russell, J. L., & Hopkins, W. D. (2010). The impact of environment on the comprehension of declarative communication in apes. Psychological Science, 21(3), 360–365. doi:10.1177/0956797610362218.
Moore, R. (2016). Meaning and ostension in great ape gestural communication. Animal Cognition, 19(1), 223–231. 10.1007/s10071-015-0905-x.
Pfandler, E., Lakatos, G., & Miklósi, Á. (2013). Eighteen-month-old human infants show intensive development in comprehension of different types of pointing gestures. Animal Cognition, 16(5), 711–719. doi:10.1007/s10071-013-0606-2.
Povinelli, D. J., Reaux, J. E., Bierschwale, D. T., Allain, A. D., & Simon, B. B. (1997). Exploitation of pointing as a referential gesture in young children, but not adolescent chimpanzees. Cognitive Development, 12(4), 423–461. doi:10.1016/S0885-2014(97)90017-4.
Udell, M. A. R., Dorey, N. R., & Wynne, C. D. L. (2008). Wolves outperform dogs in following human social cues. Animal Behaviour, 76(6), 1767–1773. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.07.028.
Udell, M., Hall, N. J., Morrison, J., Dorey, N. R., & Wynne, C. D. (2013). Point topography and within-session learning are important predictors of pet dogs’(Canis Lupus Familiaris) performance on human guided tasks. Revista Argentina de Ciencias Del Comportamiento, 5(2), 3–20.
Woodward, A. L., & Guajardo, J. J. (2002). Infants’ understanding of the point gesture as an object-directed action. Cognitive Development, 17(1), 1061–1084.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Jett, S. (2017). Understanding Human Points. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3147-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3147-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences