Pointing gestures help 2- to 4-year-olds solve, but not understand, invisible displacement problems

Although recent work in developmental psychology has established that children understand communicative gestures at a very early age, few studies have examined whether social cues would help them in the spatial domain. The objective of this study was to investigate whether 2- to 4-year-old children use adults’ pointing gestures to succeed and understand two complex invisible displacement problems that have not yet been mastered at this age: the spatial translation (Experiment 1) and the spatial rotation problems (Experiment 2). In both experiments, social and non-social conditions were administered. In the social condition, after the invisible displacement of an object to a new spatial position, an experimenter pointed the hiding location of the object. In the non-social condition, no pointing gestures were provided. The results of both experiments revealed that children use adults’ pointing gestures over their own (but erroneous) spatial knowledge. Moreover, the results of Experiment 2 showed that social cues help children to succeed, but not to understand, invisible displacements of objects. In discussion, the limitations of using adults’ pointing gestures to help children to develop an understanding of spatial problems as well as the reasons why children rely spontaneously on social communicative cues are explored.