Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Infants Understand How Testimony Works

  • Published:
Topoi Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Children learn about the world from the testimony of other people, often coming to accept what they are told about a variety of unobservable and indeed counter-intuitive phenomena. However, research on children’s learning from testimony has paid limited attention to the foundations of that capacity. We ask whether those foundations can be observed in infancy. We review evidence from two areas of research: infants’ sensitivity to the emotional expressions of other people; and their capacity to understand the exchange of information through non-verbal gestures and vocalization. We conclude that a grasp of the bi-directional exchange of information is present early in the second year. We discuss the implications for future research, especially across different cultural settings.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Moses et al. (2001) actually tested infants with two different toys but only the bumble ball toy proved ambiguous. The other toy appeared to make most children apprehensive.

  2. Infants’ sensitivity to informants’ trustworthiness goes beyond a preference for accurate emotional signalers. Zmyj et al. (2010) had 14-month-olds watch videos of people whose reliability was demonstrated by how they used common objects. Across three familiarization videos, infants watched either a reliable person who confidently performed typical actions (e.g., in one video, he placed a shoe on his foot and said “Ah!”) or an unreliable person who expressed uncertainty while performing unusual actions (e.g., in one video, he placed a shoe on his hand, and said “Hm.”). Infants then saw the person perform novel actions—turning on a lamp with his forehead (as in Poulin-Dubouis et al. 2011), and turning on a box filled with lights by sitting on it. Following each of these actions, the experimenter placed the objects (the lamp and box, respectively) in front of the infant and said, “Now you can play with it!” Infants who had watched the reliable person were more than twice as likely to imitate his novel actions compared to infants who watched the unreliable person.

  3. There is an ambiguity in this study. The statement that, “The ball is in the cup” provides information to the child, reinforcing his or her prior observation of the transfer, as well as to the returning experimenter. Therefore, when children are surprised in the informative conditions, they may show surprise because they saw the toy moved to the cup, were then told that the toy was in the cup (making it a very strong representation), and yet, the experimenter searched somewhere else. A control condition is needed in which the statement is heard by the child but not by the returning experimenter. I am grateful to Patricia Ganea for calling my attention to this issue of interpretation.

  4. Two recent studies with deaf infants provide some tantalizing, preliminary evidence on this issue. Meristo et al. (2012) report that hearing infants outperformed deaf infants (ranging from 17 to 26 months) born to hearing parents in their comprehension—as indexed by anticipatory looking—of where a cartoon character would search, given the character’s false belief. No group difference was observed when the character held a true belief. By contrast, Hobbs, Resendes, Pyers and Carey (2013) found no difference between deaf and hearing children’s performance on simple theory-of-mind tasks despite differences in the size of their vocabulary. Watch this space.

References

  • Ainsworth MDS (1992) A consideration of social referencing in the context of attachment theory and research. In: Feinman S (ed) Social referencing and the social construction of reality in infancy. Plenum Press, New York, pp 349–367

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Apperly IA, Butterfill SA (2009) Do humans have two systems to track beliefs and belief-like states? Psychol Rev 116:953–970

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bakeman R, Adamson LB (1984) Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother-infant and peer-infant interaction. Child Dev 55:1278–1289

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Begus K, Southgate V (2012) Infant pointing serves an interrogative function. Dev Sci 15:611–617

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Begus K, Gliga T, Southgate V (2012) Pointing signals infants’ readiness to learn. In: Poster presented at the international conference on infant studies (ICIS), Minneapolis, MN, June 2012

  • Behne T, Liszkowski U, Carpenter M, Tomasello M (2012) Twelve-month-olds’ comprehension and production of pointing. Br J Dev Psychol 30:359–375

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carey S (2011) The origin of concepts. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Chouinard MM (2007) Children’s questions: a mechanism for cognitive development. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 72 Serial No. 286, pp 1–112

  • Chow V, Poulin-Dubois D, Lewis J (2008) To see or not to see: infants prefer to follow the gaze of a reliable looker. Dev Sci 11:761–770

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colonnesi C, Stams GJJM, Koster I, Noom MJ (2010) The relation between pointing and language development: a meta-analysis. Dev Rev 30:352–366

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Csibra G, Gergely G (2009) Natural pedagogy. Trends Cogn Sci 14:148–153

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Csibra G, Gergely G (2011) Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation. Proc R Soci B 366:1149–1157

    Google Scholar 

  • De Rosnay M, Cooper PJ, Tsigaras N, Murray L (2006) Transmission of social anxiety from mother to infant: an experimental study using a social referencing paradigm. Behav Res Ther 44:1165–1175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Egyed K, Király I, Gergely G (2013) Communicating shared knowledge in infancy. Psychol Sci 24:1348–1353

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans EM (2001) Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: creation versus evolution. Cogn Psychol 42:217–266

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franco F, Butterworth G (1996) Pointing and social awareness: declaring and requesting in the second year. J Child Lang 23:307–336

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fusaro M, Harris PL (2013) Dax gets the nod: toddlers detect and use social cues to evaluate testimony. Dev Psychol 49:514–522

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ganea PA, Harris PL (2010) Not doing what you are told: early perseverative errors in updating mental representations via language. Child Dev 81:457–463

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ganea PA, Harris PL (2013) Early limits on the verbal updating of an object’s location. J Exp Child Psychol 114:89–101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ganea PA, Shutts K, Spelke E, DeLoache JS (2007) Thinking of things unseen: infants’ use f language to update mental representations. Psychol Sci 18:734–739

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gliga T, Csibra G (2009) One year-old infants appreciate the referential nature of deictic gestures and words. Psychol Sci 20:347–353

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris PL (2002) What do children learn from testimony? In: Carruthers P, Stich SP, Siegal M (eds) The cognitive basis of science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 316–334

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Harris PL (2007) Trust. Dev Sci 10:135–138

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris PL (2012a) The child as anthropologist. Infancia y Aprendizaje 35:259–277

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris PL (2012b) Trusting what you’re told: how children learn from others. Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Harris PL, Corriveau KH (2011) Young children’s selective trust in informants. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 366:1179–1190

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris PL, Corriveau KH (in press) Learning from testimony about religion and science. In: Robinson E, Einav S (eds) Children’s trust in testimony. Psychology Press, Hove, UK

  • Harris PL, Koenig M (2006) Trust in testimony: how children learn about science and religion. Child Dev 77:505–524

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris PL, de Rosnay M, Pons F (2005) Language and children’s understanding of mental states. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 14:69–73

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hobbs K, Resendes W, Pyers J, Carey S (2013) Early theory of mind in deaf and hearing children. In: Paper presented at the Budapest CEU conference on cognitive development, January 2013

  • Kim G, Kwak K (2011) Uncertainty matters: impact of stimulus ambiguity on infant social referencing. Infant Child Dev 20:449–463

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knudsen B, Liszkowski U (2012) Eighteen and 24-month-old infants correct others in anticipation of action mistakes. Dev Sci 15:113–122

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krehm M, Onishi KH, Vouloumanos A (in press) Infants under 12 months understand that pointing is communicative. J Cognit Dev

  • Lane JD, Harris PL (in review) Confronting, representing, and believing counterintuitive concepts: navigating the natural and the supernatural

  • Liszkowski U, Carpenter M, Striano T, Tomasello M (2006) Twelve- and 18-month-olds point to provide information for others. J Cognit Dev 7:173–187

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liszkowski U, Carpenter M, Tomasello M (2007) Pointing out new news, old news, and absent referents at 12 months of age. Dev Sci 10:F1–F7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liszkowski U, Carpenter M, Tomasello M (2008) Twelve-month-olds communicate helpfully and appropriately for knowledgeable and ignorant partners. Cognition 108:732–739

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liszkowski U, Brown P, Callaghan T, Takada A, de Vos C (2012) A prelinguistic gestural universal of human communication. Cogn Sci 36:698–713

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martin A, Onishi KH, Vouloumanos A (2012) Understanding the abstract role of speech in communication at 12 months. Cognition 123:50–60

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meristo M, Morgan G, Geraci A, Iozzi L, Hjelmquist E, Surian L, Siegal M (2012) Belief attribution in deaf and hearing infants. Dev Sci 15:633–640

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milligan K, Astington JW, Dack LA (2007) Language and theory of mind: meta-analysis of the relation between language ability and false-belief understanding. Child Dev 78:622–646

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morford JP, Goldin-Meadow S (1997) From here and now to there and then: the development of displaced reference in Homesign and English. Child Dev 68:420–435

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moses LJ, Baldwin DA, Rosicky JG, Tidball G (2001) Evidence for referential understanding in the emotions domain at twelve and eighteen months. Child Dev 72:718–735

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olson J, Masur EF (2011) Infants’ gestures influence mothers’ provision of object, action and internal state labels. J Child Lang 38:1028–1054

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Onishi KH, Baillargeon R (2005) Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs? Science 308:255–258

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Poulin-Dubois D, Brooker I, Polonia A (2011) Infants prefer to imitate a reliable person. Infant Behav Dev 34:303–309

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salomo D, Liszkowski U (2013) Sociocultural settings influence the emergence of prelinguistic gestures. Child Dev 84(4):1296–1307

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shneidman LA, Goldin-Meadow S (2012) Language input and acquisition in a Mayan village: how important is directed speech? Dev Sci 15:659–673

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Song H-J, Onishi KH, Baillargeon R, Fisher C (2008) Can an agent’s false belief be corrected by an appropriate communication? Psychological reasoning in 18-month-old infants. Cognition 109:295–315

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sorce JF, Emde RN, Campos J, Klinnert MD (1985) Maternal emotional signaling: its effect on the visual cliff behavior of 1-year-olds. Dev Psychol 21:195–200

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Southgate V, van Maanen C, Csibra G (2007) Infant pointing: communication to cooperate or communication to learn? Child Dev 78:735–740

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Southgate V, Chevallier C, Csibra G (2010) Seventeen-month-olds appeal to false beliefs to interpret others’ referential communication. Dev Sci 13:907–912

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spelke ES, Kinzler KD (2007) Core knowledge. Dev Sci 10:89–96

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stenberg G (2009) Selectivity in infant social referencing. Infancy 14:457–473

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stenberg G (2013) Do 12-month-olds infants trust a competent adult? Infancy. (advanced online publication)

  • Tamis-LeMonda CS, Song L (2013) Parent-infant communicative interactions in cultural context. In: Lerner RM, Easterbrooks MA, Mistry J, Weiner IB (eds) handbook of psychology: developmental psychology, vol 6. Wiley, Hoboken, pp 143–170

    Google Scholar 

  • Tamis-LeMonda CS, Adolph KE, Lobo SA, Karasik LB, Ishak S, Dimitropoulou KA (2008) When infants take mothers’ advice: 18-month-olds integrate perceptual and social information to guide motor action. Dev Psychol 44:734–746

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M (2008) Origins of human communication. The MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M, Carpenter M, Liszkowski U (2007) A new look at infant pointing. Child Dev 78:705–722

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trevarthen C, Hubley P (1978) Secondary intersubjectivity: Confidence, confiding and acts of meaning in the first year. In: Lock A (ed) Action, gesture and symbol: the emergence of language. Academic Press, London, pp 183–229

    Google Scholar 

  • Vouloumanos A, Onishi KH, Pogue A (2012) Twelve-month-old infants recognize that speech can communicate unobservable intentions. PNAS 109:12933–12937

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walden TA, Kim G (2005) Infants’ social looking toward mothers and strangers. Int J Behav Dev 29:356–360

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zmyj N, Buttellmann D, Carpenter M, Daum MM (2010) The reliability of a model influences 14-month-olds’ imitation. J Exp Child Psychol 106:208–220

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Several people provided feedback on this paper or provided us with forthcoming papers. We warmly thank Katarina Begus, Kathleen Corriveau, Maria Fusaro, Vibeke Grøver, Kathryn Hobbs, Melissa Koenig, Jennie Pyers, Samuel Ronfard, Victoria Southgate, Athena Vouloumanos, Alex Was and Imac Zambrana.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Paul L. Harris & Jonathan D. Lane

Authors
  1. Paul L. Harris
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jonathan D. Lane
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul L. Harris.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Harris, P.L., Lane, J.D. Infants Understand How Testimony Works. Topoi 33, 443–458 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9180-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9180-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation