The Origin of Pointing: Evidence for the Touch Hypothesis
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Output type: Journal article
UM6P affiliated Publication?: No
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science
Publication year: 2019
ISSN: 0036-8075
URL: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/eaav2558
Abstract
Pointing gestures play a foundational role in human language, but up to now, we have not known where these gestures come from. Here, we investigated the hypothesis that pointing originates in touch. We found, first, that when pointing at a target, children and adults oriented their fingers not as though trying to create an “arrow” that picks out the target but instead as though they were aiming to touch it; second, that when pointing at a target at an angle, participants rotated their wrists to match that angle as they would if they were trying to touch the target; and last, that young children interpret pointing gestures as if they were attempts to touch things, not as arrows. These results provide the first substantial evidence that pointing originates in touch.
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