Adults' social cues facilitate young children's use of signs and symbols

Abstract

Three experiments investigated the effect of an adult's social cues on 2- and 3-year-old children's ability to use a sign or symbol to locate a hidden object. Results showed that an adult's positive, engaging facial expression facilitated children's ability to identify the correct referent, particularly for 3-year-olds. A neutral facial expression and the presence of the adult's hand also facilitated performance, but to a lesser degree than did an engaging facial expression. The effect of the adult's social cues was greater for relatively unfamiliar signs and symbols (replica or arrow) than it was for a more familiar sign (pointing finger). These findings indicate that non-directional social cues such as facial expression help to convey communicative intent and facilitate children's comprehension of signs and symbols.

Meaning and ostension in great ape gestural communication

“…Reflecting the intuition that such forms of eye contact play an important role in addressing others, in developmental research investigating the effects of ostensive communication in children, the dependent variable of ostension is characteristically operationalised by comparing situations in which agents use eye contact to address their communicative acts to interlocutors with situations in which their gaze is covered or intentionally averted (Behne et al 2005;Senju and Csibra 2008;Leekam et al 2010;Moore et al 2013Moore et al , 2015. While other measures (like directed speech) are also used, consensus is that-at least in humans-where eye contact is used to address an utterance to its intended audience, this suffices to make communicative behaviours ostensive.…”

Diversity in Unity: Perspectives from Psychology and Behavioral Sciences

“…Facial expression together with eye contact are the first strong cues that are perceived and understood by infants, and carried bold emotional and affection content (Leekam et al, 2010;Repacholi et al, 2014Repacholi et al, , 2016. Meanwhile, the Sundanese gaze rules consider it to be impolite to have eye contact while talking to someone older (Rosidi, 2011;Rusyana et al, 1988).…”

“…Human children learn to understand those cues from infancy (see Barry et al, 2015;Fawcett & Gredeback, 2013;Repacholi et al, 2008). Eye gaze and facial expression are the primary cues for others to understand one's intention (see Jack et al, 2009;Langtong et al, 2000;Leekam et al, 2010). Prior studies of cues reveal that facial expression and eye gaze are the first cues that an infant recognises and processes in order to understand their mother and thus these cues serve as the foundation of social cognition (see Allison et al, 2000;Emery, 2000;Streri et al, 2013).…”

“…The mother's expression will represent her community norms and values (Jack et al, 2009(Jack et al, , 2012Murata et al, 2013). Facial expression is the most powerful and important cue to human children, because face perception develops on the first day of a newborn's life and is an immediate source of information on the mothers' emotions (Haxby & Ida Gobbini, 2007;Johnson et al, 1991;Leekam et al, 2010). A Sundanese mother also employs facial expression when interacting with her child; however, there are boundaries for the mother to express her emotions within the Sundanese norm, especially in the facial expression and eye contact (Ekadjati, 2014;Rusyana et al, 1988).…”

Interacting mindreaders

“…Consider a related experiment by Leekam et al (2010). Again participants had to retrieve a reward from one of several closed containers, but this time they were 2-and 3-year-old children.…”