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ERIC Number: EJ1077850
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Nov
Pages: 25
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Prelinguistic Vocalizations Distinguish Pointing Acts
Grunloh, Thomas; Liszkowski, Ulf
Journal of Child Language, v42 n6 p1312-1336 Nov 2015
The current study investigated whether point-accompanying characteristics, like vocalizations and hand shape, differentiate infants' underlying motives of prelinguistic pointing. We elicited imperative (requestive) and declarative (expressive and informative) pointing acts in experimentally controlled situations, and analyzed accompanying characteristics. Experiment 1 revealed that prosodic characteristics of point-accompanying vocalizations distinguished requestive from both expressive and informative pointing acts, with little differences between the latter two. In addition, requestive points were more often realized with the whole hand than the index finger, while this was the opposite for expressive and informative acts. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1, revealing distinct prosodic characteristics for requestive pointing also when the referent was distal and when it had an index-finger shape. Findings reveal that beyond the social context, point-accompanying vocalizations give clues to infants' underlying intentions when pointing.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A