Do 10- and 13-month-old infants provide informative gestures for their mothers in a hiding game?

Infants’ abilities to request and to inform by gazing and pointing at 10 months and 13 months of age are studied. We expect that 10-month-old children may use more gazing than pointing and that 13-month-old children perform more pointing than gazing. We hypothesize further that10-month-olds and 13-month-olds perform imperative pointing similarly, they differ when informative pointing is requested: younger infants would fail to use it. The experimental setting tests acts of indicating in a hiding game during routine and de-routinized situation by unbalancing the accessibility of information available to mother. In routines, where the mother is present during hiding, 10-month-old have a high score of correct indications by gaze as well as by pointing. In a non-routine context, 10-month-old children fail to indicate by gazing and pointing whereas 13-month-old children succeed. Results are discussed in terms of infants’ Theory of mind, more specifically the ability to represent one's partner epistemic intentions.

► We use a new paradigm inspired by Bruner to study infant's informative gestures. ► We choose infants as young as 10 months of age to capture the emergence of informative gestures. ► From our results, ostensive gazing appear as an indicative behavior before pointing, as Bruner suggested. ► Ten-month-olds perform as 13 month-olds in the imperative context, but not in the informative one. ► Ten-month-olds may not have the ability to represent one's partner mind knowledge.