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Pointing

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Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior

Introduction

An early developmental hallmark in human social cognition is the ability to understand pointing as a form of referential communication. Referential pointing in humans is a triadic communicative transaction involving the management of joint attention between an informant, a receiver, and a subject of interest. Pointing is not only adaptive as a form of communication but it can also inform a receiver and an informant about each other’s visual perception, social awareness, and knowledge state. In human infants, the ability to understand the referring function of the pointing cue develops over the first 2 years of life (reviewed in Pfandler et al. 2013). Since the early 1990s, there has been an “explosion” of studies in nonhuman animals on how they respond to pointing cues, whether they produce pointing cues, and if they appreciate a pointing cues’ referring function (see summaries in Miklosi and Soproni 2006, Pack and Herman 2006; Lyn 2010; Kaminski and Nitzschner 2013;...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Psychology and Biology, University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hilo, HI, USA

    Adam A. Pack

  2. The Dolphin Institute, Hilo, HI, USA

    Adam A. Pack

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  1. Adam A. Pack
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Correspondence to Adam A. Pack .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University , Rochester, MI, USA

    Jennifer Vonk

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University Department of Psychology, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, USA

    Sarah Dunphy-Lelii

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Pack, A.A. (2019). Pointing. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_753-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_753-1

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