Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

Sharing attention and pointing to objects

at 12 months: is the intentional
stance implied?
Maria Legerstee∗ , Yarixa Barillas
Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street,
Toronto, Ont., Canada M3P1J3

Received 1 March 2002; received in revised form 1 November 2002; accepted 1 December 2002

Abstract
The goal of the present research was to assess whether communicative gestures, such
as gazing and declarative pointing of 12-month-old infants indicate that infants perceive
people as intentional agents, or whether infant communicative behaviors are merely trig-
gered by specific perceptual cues in joint visual attention situations. Two experiments
were conducted. In Experiment 1, thirty-two 12-month-olds were conditioned to fol-
low the gaze of a contingently interacting person or object. They were then submitted
to a paradigm designed to incite them to initiate communicative gestures to the per-
son or object. The temporal coordination between pointing, gazing, and vocalizations
occurred at a significantly higher rate in the Person than in the Object condition. In
Experiment 2, the effect of the attentional focus of others on the gaze, points and vo-
calizations of thirty 12-month-olds was investigated. Infants were assessed in conditions
where the experimenter vocalized while looking at the same (In-focus), or a different
(Out-of-focus) toy than the infants. Infants who pointed produced more co-occurrences
of gaze, vocalizations and points in the Out-of-focus condition than in the In-focus con-
dition. Thus, by 12 months, infants are aware of the attentional state of the person. Dis-
cussion centers on the implications of these findings for theories of social and cognitive
knowing.
© 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Declarative pointing; Intentional communication; Internal states

∗Corresponding author.
E-mail address: legerste@yorku.ca (M. Legerstee).

0885-2014/03/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0885-2014(02)00165-X
92 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

1. Introduction

The months leading to the middle of infancy mark an important change in

infants’ social cognitive development. As ontogeny progresses, 9–12-month-olds’
means of relating to the social world undergoes a key transition. From engag-
ing exclusively in dyadic interactions early in development (either with people or
objects), infants begin to take part in triadic exchanges at around their first year
(Bakeman & Adamson, 1984; Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998; Desrochers,
Morrissette, & Ricard, 1995; Feinman, 1982; Legerstee, Varghese, & van Beek,
2002; Legerstee & Weintraub, 1997; Leung & Rheingold, 1981; Scaife & Bruner,
1975; Striano & Rochat, 1999; Trevarthen, 1979). These emerging triadic ex-
changes, constitute infants’ first attempts to simultaneously integrate object inter-
est and person engagement within their focus of attention. It is generally agreed
that these early abilities index the intentional stance in infants. Infants begin to
perceive people as intentional agents whose perspective may differ from their
own (Tomasello, 1995). As a consequence, infants engage in a variety of behav-
iors that indicate that they perceive human actions to be purposeful and guided by
goals (Baldwin & Moses, 1994; Baron-Cohen, 1991; Franco & Butterworth, 1996;
Legerstee, 2001; Messer, 1997; Tomasello, 1995, 1998; Tomasello, Kruger, &
Ratner, 1993).
The purpose of the present paper is to examine the occurrence of two important
behaviors in 12-months-old infants that manifest such understanding. The first is
gaze following and the second is declarative pointing. Through following people’s
gazes, infants begin to look at the same object or event the other is looking at
(Butterworth, 1995). However, gaze following often involves more than just si-
multaneous looking. A key characteristic is that both participants share an interest
in the object and both are aware of the other (Tomasello, 1995). In its most ele-
mentary form, gaze following is evidenced at 6 months. At this age, infants are
reported to look in the same direction to which their caregivers have shifted their
line of regard (Butterworth & Cochran, 1980; Butterworth & Jarrett, 1991). Later
in development infants may repeatedly alternate their gazes from social partner and
back to the object of interest, a behavioral strategy that allows infants to monitor
others’ attention while also sharing experiences of the world with them (Carpenter
et al., 1998; Franco & Butterworth, 1996). Such visual checking is a key element
in gaze following. By 12 months, infants begin to use gaze direction (attention) of
people to infer what objects people are emoting about in order to make decisions
about their own actions on objects (Moses, Baldwin, Rosicky, & Tidball, 2001).
Thus, by 12 months, infants use the partner’s attention to guide their own behavior.
Simultaneous to sharing attention through gaze following, infants develop other
complex and intentional acts of communication. Studies indicate that 9–12-month-
olds begin to reliably follow not only the gazes but also the manual points of adults
to outside entities (Carpenter et al., 1998; Lempers, 1979; Morrissette, Ricard, &
Decarie, 1995; Murphy & Messer, 1977; Scaife & Bruner, 1975). Quite reveal-
ing is the observation that infants begin to use points to direct adult attention
 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110 93

to interesting objects (Carpenter et al., 1998; Desrochers et al., 1995; Franco &
Butterworth, 1996; Lempers, 1979; Leung & Rheingold, 1981; Morrissette,
Ricard, & Decarie, 1995). These points have been called declarative points (Bates,
Camaioni, & Volterra, 1975) and are evidence that infants recognize others as in-
tentional agents (Desrochers et al., 1995). These behaviors are not frequently used
by young children with autism who have difficulty developing a theory of mind
(Charman et al., 1997), nor by primates (Povinelli & Eddy, 1996).

1.1. Gaze following and declarative pointing controversies

Although there is generally a consensus that gaze following and declarative

pointing are facilitated by infants’ maturing concept of people (e.g., Baldwin &
Moses, 1994; Baron-Cohen, 1991; Franco & Butterworth, 1996; Legerstee, 2001;
Messer, 1997; Tomasello, 1995, 1998; Tomasello et al., 1993) some have advanced
interpretations that are at sharp variance with this view (e.g., Barresi & Moore,
1996; Corkum & Moore, 1995, 1998; Johnson, Booth, & O’Hearn, 2001; Johnson,
Slaughter, & Carey, 1998; Moore & Corkum, 1994). These authors argue that
gaze following and declarative pointing in 12-month-old infants do not involve an
understanding that people are intentional agents (Corkum & Moore, 1998; Johnson
et al., 1998, 2001; Moore & D’Entremont, 2001). For instance, Corkum and Moore
(1995) demonstrated that gaze following can be conditioned in infants as young
as 9 months.
Johnson et al. (1998) have found that infants will reliably follow the head turns
of an inanimate object that has facial features and exhibits contingently interactive
behaviors, and that 15-month-old infants will produce communicative gestures
to an interactive inanimate object (Johnson et al., 2001). The authors presented
15-month-olds with a stuffed orangutan puppet that was handled by an experi-
menter out of the infants’ view, to embody the behavior of an intentional agent
(the presence of a face, self-generated movement, and contingent behavior). An-
other experimenter, who sat beside the infants, talked and otherwise interacted
with the puppet as though it were an intentional agent. The infants directed com-
municative behaviors to the puppet, such as waving, showing and giving, and
alternated attention between the puppet’s face and a toy. The authors proposed
that 15-month-olds have a conceptual representation of a mentalistic agent, which
can be invoked by faces, and displays of reciprocal and contingent behaviors, of
both social and non-social objects.
While Johnson et al.’s (2001) findings may shed light on infants’ sensitivity to
some of the key features that characterize the behavior of people, such as contingent
and reciprocal behavior, the inferences drawn from their design are problematic
in various ways. The infants’ communicative gestures, aimed at the stuffed pup-
pet, may have been modeled after the interactive experimenter who sat beside the
infants. Furthermore, the lack of important controls, which would be most ap-
propriately addressed with the addition of a Person condition against which the
Object condition (stuffed orangutan puppet) could be compared, prevents one to
94 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

conclude that by 15 months infants merely respond to others solely on the basis
of perceptual cues.
The following experiment assessed whether 12-month-old infants communicate
to people as well as inanimate objects about external events. Following Corkum
and Moore (1998), infants were first conditioned to follow the gaze/head turns of a
person or a life-sized doll. Immediately following this conditioning, infants were
submitted to a paradigm designed to facilitate the production of social commu-
nicative gestures (such as gaze, vocalizations and points). Infant communicative
gestures were observed as they pointed to active/sounding toys in the presence
of either the person or the inanimate object. It was hypothesized that although it
may be possible to condition infants to follow the gazes/head turns of social and
non-social agents to interesting sights (as suggested by Corkum & Moore, 1998),
this does not necessarily mean that infants see the non-social agent as intentional
(as suggested by Johnson et al., 1998). Therefore, it was anticipated that infants
would communicate (e.g., produce declarative points) to people only during the
production task.

2. Experiment 1

2.1. Method

2.1.1. Participants
Thirty-two 12-month-old infants were tested (M = 12.3, S.D. = 0.26, range =
363–383 days, 18 females, 14 males). An additional five infants began the pro-
cedure but were not included in the final sample due to fussiness (N = 3), and
experimental error (N = 2). Participants were randomly assigned to either the
Person or Object condition with the restriction that there were an equal number of
participants per condition. All infants came from lower- to middle-class families,
and all parents reported that their infants had begun to point.

2.1.2. Apparatus and procedure

Infants were assessed inside a cubicle (2.5 m × 2.5 m wide, and 2 m high) that
was surrounded by curtains in order to eliminate possible distractions. An observer,
seated adjacent to, but outside of the cubicle, monitored the progress of the sessions
via a 56 cm × 42 cm TV monitor.

2.1.2.1. Conditioning task. For the conditioning task, the participants were seated
on their caregivers’ lap facing one of two stimuli, a person (experimenter) or a
life-sized doll (seated at infant eye level). A distance of 60 cm separated infants
from the stimulus. The person and the doll were similar in size and appearance.
They both wore black slacks, a white shirt, and black shoes. The motions they per-
formed throughout the study were also matched. To prevent caregivers from influ-
encing the performance of infants, they were asked to wear sunglasses and to refrain
 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110 95

Fig. 1. Schematic of the experimental setup.

from interacting with the infants. Positioned on each side of the cubicle were two
stuffed toys, a dog and a duck (each 22.5 cm tall), each placed on a turntable inside
a Plexiglas box. One box sat 90◦ to the left and the other one 90◦ to the right, of the
infant (1.3 m away from the infants) (Corkum & Moore, 1998). Both boxes were po-
sitioned at infant eye level (77 cm from the floor) (see Fig. 1). These toys served as
reinforcers in the conditioning task. When the person/doll made head orientations
to either one of the toys, the observer monitoring the session activated the turntable
on which the toy rested. Thus, when infants matched the person/doll’s orientation,
they could see the toy rotate. A light, installed on the ceiling of the Plexiglas boxes,
was also simultaneously turned on to better illuminate the rotating toy (Corkum &
Moore, 1998). The arrangement of the stuffed dog and duck toys (e.g., duck to right
and dog to left of infants, or vice versa) was counterbalanced across the sample.
In the Person condition, the conditioning task began when the experimenter
established eye contact with the infants by calling their names. When eye contact
was established, the experimenter oriented her head to the left or right to one of
the toys in the Plexiglas box (Corkum & Moore, 1998). Each head orientation
trial lasted 7 s, where upon the experimenter returned her gaze to midline before
executing the next trial (Corkum & Moore, 1998). The experimenter produced a
total of 20 head orientation trials.
96 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

In the Object condition the doll was manipulated by an experimenter hidden

behind the cubicle, to make “head orientations.” In order to get the infants to look
at the doll, the experimenter (out of sight of the infants) played a set of bells in
between trials. Infants were required to look at the doll before it was manipulated
to “look” at one side or the other. Apart from calling name/playing bell prior to
orienting, the person/doll was silent throughout the 20 trials of Experiment 1.
The conditioning administered to the infants in the present study was identical
to that of Corkum and Moore (1998), with a few exceptions. These exceptions
comprised some modifications that were inspired by the work of Rovee-Collier
and Sullivan (1980). The rational was two-fold. First, because it had earlier been
established that infants can be conditioned to follow gaze direction (e.g., Corkum
& Moore, 1998), we chose the Rovee-Collier and Sullivan paradigm because this
procedure allows for the use of less trials. Second, the Rovee-Collier and Sullivan
paradigm has the advantage of assessing whether infants have retained what they
learn during conditioning. Consequently, the conditioning task in the present study
consisted of three successive periods: baseline, acquisition, and retention periods.
During the baseline period, the person/doll executed four head orientation trials
(two to each side) (Corkum & Moore, 1998). Because this was a baseline measure,
the toy to which the person/doll oriented remained inactive. Infant responses during
baseline provided the basis upon which conditioning could be assessed later. If
infants had been conditioned, there had to be a significant increase in the number
of gaze following responses from the baseline period to the retention period.
Whereas Corkum and Moore (1998) gave their infants only 4 trials, in the
present acquisition period the infants were given 12 trials (6 to each side). In this
period, the toy to which the person/doll oriented was activated in order to reinforce
the gaze following responses of the infants. Lastly, the retention period comprised
4 trials (2 to each side) (rather than 20 as in Corkum & Moore, who continued
to “shape” the infants during the retention period). As in the baseline period, the
toys remained inactive. This condition served as an immediate test of retention
of the previous acquisition period. The head orientation trials of the person/doll
to the right and left were randomized for order across the sample. The overall
conditioning task lasted approximately 4–6 min.
Sessions were filmed using two video cameras, one capturing a full body view
of infants and another one a face view of the person/doll. The output of the two
video cameras was combined with a split screen generator. For coding purposes,
a small light bulb (placed out of infants’ view) was also captured by one of the
cameras and lit at the beginning of each head orientation trial and turned off at
the end of each trial. This allowed a coder to score infants’ responses, blind to the
direction of the person’s/doll’s orientations (Corkum & Moore, 1998).

2.1.2.2. Production task. Immediately following the conditioning task, infants

were assessed in a paradigm designed to facilitate the production of communicative
bids in infants. To control for novelty effects, identical toys used in the conditioning
task were used for the production task. The stuffed duck and dog toy, positioned
 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110 97

on either side of the cubicle, were placed on tables situated 15 cm from the infants
(see Fig. 1). On activation, the stuffed dog toy walked while emitting a barking
sound, and the stuffed duck toy walked while emitting a quacking sound. These
remote-controlled toys remained hidden under white covers until infants completed
the conditioning task. At this time, the observer uncovered the toys by pulling
on strings attached to the covers and that extended outside the cubicle to the
location of the observer. The observer activated one toy at a time according to
a pre-established sequence of movement/pause (10 s activation followed by a 5 s
pause). The activation of each remote-controlled toy was randomized for order
across the sample. This task lasted 2.4 min.
The person and doll “looked” ahead at the infant while otherwise remaining
unresponsive to the infant in order to avoid inducing any form of social, simulated
or matched response from the infant. Both the person and the doll had the corners of
their lips curled up (e.g., portraying a light smile) to avoid distressing the infants.
A date–time generator was imposed directly on to the video-recorded image in
order to determine lengths of infant behaviors in the coding process.

2.1.3. Dependent variables

2.1.3.1. Conditioning task. A coder blind to the hypotheses of the study scored
the direction of infants’ head orientations that they made in response to the per-
son/doll. In order to keep the coder blind to the experimental condition one side of
the video monitor was covered so that only the infant was visible. The coder was
instructed to score only the first head orientation infants produced during the time
span that the signaling bulb was lit (Corkum & Moore, 1998).
Calculation of the dependent variable was performed after Corkum and Moore
(1998). A dependent variable was made up of a difference score based on the
number of the infants’ head orientation responses. The difference score was cal-
culated by subtracting the frequency of matched responses from the frequency of
mismatched responses for each of the baseline, and retention periods. A matched
response was coded if infants oriented to the same toy to which the person/doll
turned; a mismatched score was coded if the infants oriented toward the oppo-
site toy to which the person/doll “looked.” Thus, if infants matched more often
than they mismatched, a difference score in the positive direction was expected.
Conversely, if they mismatched more often than they matched, a difference score
in the negative direction was expected. A perfect score on four trials would be
4 and the least perfect score would be −4 (Corkum & Moore, 1998). To assess
the reliability of the coder, another coder scored 30% of the sessions. Inter-coder
reliability for infants’ head orientation responses was 0.96 (kappa coefficient of
agreement corrected for chance).

2.1.3.2. Production task. In order to examine infants’ overall behavior through-

out the production task, duration of gaze direction toward the stimulus, vocaliza-
tions, positive affect, and visual checking and the frequency of pointing was coded
by an observer blind to the hypothesis of the study. During coding, the side of the
98 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

video monitor that displayed the person/doll was covered so that only the infants
were visible.
After Legerstee, Corter, and Kienapple (1990), gaze direction toward the stim-
ulus was operationalized as looks straight ahead, aligned with the stimulus’ face.
Positive affect was coded when infants turned up the corners of their lips, regardless
of whether their mouth was open or closed. Vocalizations were defined as sounds
with a demonstrative tonal quality. Vegetative sounds (hiccups and burps) and cry-
ing were not coded. Although pointing had been defined as either (1) both arms
and index finger extended toward one of the toys, or (2) finger-pointing (finger,
but not arm, extended toward one of the toys) or (3) arm pointing (arm extended
toward one of the toys with hand holding other postures) according to Franco and
Butterworth (1996), infants only produced index fingers and arm extensions in the
direction of the interesting object, while the remaining fingers were curled lightly
or tightly under the hand (see Fig. 3). Visual checking was defined as acts of joint
engagement in which infants looked at the person/doll, then immediately at one of
the remote-controlled toys, and instantly back at the person/doll. All the dependent
variables were coded without sound with the exception of vocalizations.
In order to examine the sophistication of infant communicative acts to the
person and doll, infant responses were combined into behavioral sequences that
included gaze direction toward the stimulus. In the literature, gaze direction has
been described as a fundamental social signal used for communicative purposes
(e.g., to signal direction of attention) (Butterworth, 1991; Legerstee et al., 1990).
Following Franco and Butterworth (1996), we coded gaze direction toward the
stimulus combined with a pointing gesture whether it occurred within 2 s before
gesture initiation, during gesture execution, or within 2 s of gesture completion.
Pointing was either combined with (i) gaze (PG) or (ii) gaze and vocalization
(PGV).
To check the reliability of the coder, another coder scored 30% of the sessions.
Kappas for gaze direction toward the stimulus, vocalizations, positive affect, and
pointing were 0.94, 0.87, 0.85, and 0.91, respectively.

2.2. Results

2.2.1. Conditioning task

A three-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to
evaluate whether infants were conditioned to the gaze-following task, and to check
for any toy effects that may have resulted from using different toys. Condition (two
levels: Person and Object) was a between-subjects variable, and learning (two lev-
els: baseline and retention), and toy (two levels: dog and duck) the within-subjects
variables. The difference scores (for the baseline and retention periods) derived
from infants’ matches and mismatches to the person’s/doll’s head orientations
were used as the dependent measure in this analysis. Table 1 outlines the mean
difference scores for each condition and for the group (both conditions collapsed),
during baseline and retention periods.
 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110 99

Table 1
Mean difference scores for each condition and for the group during baseline and retention periods
Condition Period

Baseline Retention
M S.D. M S.D.
Person condition 1.5 1.21 2.68 1.3
Object condition −0.18 1.04 0.87 1.25
Group (Person and Object conditions) 0.65 1.4 1.78 1.56

The analysis revealed a significant conditioning effect for group (F(1, 30) =
15.3, P < .001). The mean difference score was higher for the retention than for
the baseline period for both the Person and Object conditions. There was also a
significant Condition effect (F(1, 30) = 30.66, P < .001). The difference scores
in the Person condition were significantly higher than the difference scores in the
Object condition. As expected, the Conditioning × Condition interaction was not
significant (F(1, 30) = 0.047, P > .829), indicating that infants in the Person and
Object conditions were conditioned similarly. Consequently, differences in the
responses of infants during the production task must be related to person/object
differentiation, rather than to different degrees in conditioning.
In summary, the results supported the hypothesis that if provided with proper
reinforcement, infants can be conditioned to match the gaze/head orientations of
the person/doll at levels above chance. The significant increase in the difference
scores from the baseline to the retention periods suggests that infants learned to
systematically expect an interesting sight (rotating toy) in the direction in which
the person/doll shifted her/its head.

2.2.2. Production task

To examine whether the duration of infant behaviors were affected by condition,
four one-way ANOVAs were conducted. To control for Type 1 error, alpha level was
adjusted to 0.0125. Fig. 2 shows the means of the different infant behaviors for the
Person and Object conditions. Results indicated that infants produced significantly
longer gazes (F(1, 30) = 10.33, P < .003), toward the person (M = 15.31,
S.D. = 6.37) than toward the doll (M = 8.75, S.D. = 5.11). There was also
a significant difference in the duration of positive affect (F(1, 30) = 8.19, P <
.008), directed at the person and doll (M = 31.88, S.D. = 40.36; M = 7.19,
S.D. = 17.16, respectively). There was an interesting trend in visual checking
(F(1, 30) = 5.0, P < .033), with more of these behaviors produced to the person
(M = 2.25, S.D. = 1.34) than to the doll (M = 1.31, S.D. = 1.53). Finally,
infants also vocalized more (F(1, 30) = 6.94, P < .013) to the person (M = 4.06,
S.D. = 4.89) than to the doll (M = 0.75, S.D. = 1.24), albeit only marginally
significantly so.
Because the production of pointing can not be done by chance (Desrochers
et al., 1995), analyzing the frequencies of points is not of theoretical importance.
100 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

Fig. 2. Mean proportional durations of infant gaze direction toward the stimulus, visual checking,
vocalizations, and positive affect in the Object and Person conditions.

Consequently, only one occurrence of pointing in combination with gaze and vo-
calizations per infant were analyzed. Out of the 32 infants, 11 pointed. Nine out
of 16 infants (56%) were in the Person condition/and 2 out of 16 (12.5%) were in
the Object condition. All infants who pointed in the Person condition produced at
least 1 GP, and 1 GVP (see Table 2). Consequently, only the GVP sequences were
analyzed. A chi-square analysis (χ2 (1, N = 32) = 6.78, P < .023) indicated that
significantly more infants produced GVP sequences to the person than to the doll.
Thus, it would appear that the majority of infants were aware that only people can
attend to things, but not objects.

2.3. Discussion

It had been hypothesized that infants in the Person and Object conditions, when
properly reinforced, could be conditioned to orient their gaze/head turn in the
same direction in which the person/doll turned their head. The results showed that
most infants learned that aligning their heads with that of the stimulus predicted an
interesting sight, whether the stimulus was a person or an object. However, when in-
cited to spontaneously generate communicative gestures, significantly more infants

Table 2
Number of infants who produced GP as well as GVP sequences, and no points to the Person and Object
stimuli in Experiment 1
Condition GPa GVPa No point Total subjects

Person 9 9 7 16
Object 2 2 14 16
a
Number of infants who produced both point/gaze (GP) sequences as well as point/gaze/
vocalization (GVP) sequences.
 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110 101

produced particular sequences of behaviors that included points, gaze and vocal-
izations to people than to objects. This finding seems to support the idea that infants
at that age construe people differently from objects. Infants identify people, and not
objects, as classes with whom they can communicate (Legerstee, 2001; Legerstee,
Di Adamo, & Barna, 2000).
It could be argued that rather than sharing interest about objects with people,
infants are simply directing attention to themselves, or are gesturing to enhance the
situation (cf. Moore & D’Entremont, 2001). Corkum and Moore (1995, 1998) pro-
pose that, it is not until the end of the second year that infant pointing reflects a con-
ceptual understanding of intentional behavior in others. In support of these claims,
Moore and D’Entremont (2001) found that both 10–15- and 22–26-month-olds
produced more points when the caregivers were looking at the same object as the
infants, rather than away from it, or toward another interesting sight. The older
infants, however, also produced significantly more points than the younger ones
when the parents looked away. The authors suggested that the gestures that were
produced when infants and parents were not looking to the same object are points
that redirect attention, and consequently involve some recognition of internal states
of others. In contrast, points that are produced when the adult is looking at the same
object as the infants, are points that are directed either at the self or to enhance the
interaction and do not rely on the attentional state of the adult. Because the older
children (2 years of age) produced significantly more points when the adults looked
away, Corkum and Moore (1998) concluded that points involving the recognition
of people as intentional agents, occur toward the end of the second year.
There are various methodological difficulties with the Moore and D’Entremont
(2001) study that may have affected the results they obtained. Deak, Flom, and
Pick (2000) suggest that when adults use perceptually salient gestures (looking
away while talking about the object at which they look, for instance), infants may
be cued to the caregiver who is gazing away, thereby increasing the opportunity
to point at the Out-of-focus object. It would further seem that pointing alone to
caregivers who are looking away is not very informative. Infants who are aware of
gaze direction of people would notice that the attention of the person is directed
away from them and the Out-of-focus object. These infants would check where
the person is looking, point to the object and check her gaze again. If the person is
still not looking, infants vocalize to get her attention, and then point to the object.
Thus, in this sequence, the function of pointing and vocalizing is to redirect the
attention of the person to the infants’ and their points, rather than labeling the
object or directing attention to it. Because Moore and D’Entremont (2001) did not
code the vocalizations of the infants, it remains difficult to determine, whether in
fact a situation to share interesting things about the world was established. Further
controls are needed to tease apart the interpretations the authors put forth.
In Experiment 1, the person looked at the infants, and not at the target objects
(which were placed to the right and left of both the infant and the person/doll). Con-
sequently, we do not know whether infants would point differentially as a function
of the attentional focus of the experimenter. In Experiment 2, we tested whether 1
102 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

year olds pointed differentially depending on whether the adult was looking to or
away from an active/sounding object. A between-subject discrepant focus scenario
(Moses et al., 2001) comprised of two attention conditions was employed. In the
first condition, the In-focus condition, the infants looked at the same object the
experimenter looked at and emoted about. In the other condition, the Out-of-focus
condition, the experimenter looked and emoted at a different object than the infant.
We hypothesized that if infants understand that the experimenter is attending to
another object than they are, then they might look at her, point at the object, look
at her again, vocalize to draw attention to themselves, and then point to the target
object (GVP).

3. Experiment 2

3.1. Method

3.1.1. Participants
A total of 34 infants were recruited for the study. Four infants were tested but ex-
cluded due to experimental error (N = 3) and fussiness (N = 1). Data from 30 in-
fants were included in the final sample (13 males and 17 females). The infants were
between 11 and 14 months of age (M = 12.3, S.D. = 0.29), range 370–394 days
The sample came from middle class families as determined by parental education.

3.1.2. Apparatus and stimuli

Infants were shown two remote-controlled white fluffy dog toys. One of the
dogs had a scarf on (female dog) and the other wore shorts (male dog). Different
clothes, non-overlapping activation of each dog, and their opposite locations made
it less likely that infants would mistake which dog the experimenter directed her
attention (gaze and vocalizations) toward.

3.1.3. Equipment
Three video cameras filmed the sessions. Two cameras were directed at the in-
fant. These cameras provided an accurate view of the infant’s face, eyes and points.
The other camera filmed where the experimenter was looking. The pictures were
combined with a split screen generator providing a scene of the complete setup (see
Fig. 3). This allowed us to check whether the infant noticed where the experimenter
was looking throughout filming. A video record was obtained with time in seconds
digitally recorded on it, providing information about the continuous flow of events.

3.1.4. Procedure
Infants were randomly assigned to one of two attention conditions: (1) In-focus
and (2) Out-of-focus. Infants were placed in front of a table (67 cm × 117 cm)
on their caregiver’s lap and facing a female experimenter. Caregivers wore head-
phones and were not informed about the experimental hypotheses until after the
 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110 103

Fig. 3. Infant pointing in Out-of-focus condition.

experiment. Consequently, they could not cue their infant one-way or another. The
two toys were placed on the left and right side of the table, at a 60 cm distance from
each other, and at 60 cm from the infants. The infants were seated in such a way
that they could see both toys and the experimenter when looking straight ahead.
A research assistant sat on the floor behind the table and activated the toys via a
remote control. Only one dog was activated per trial. She watched infant looking
behavior on a TV monitor out of sight from both the infant and caregiver. The In-
and Out-of-focus conditions consisted of three trials each.
A standard procedure was followed across the conditions. The experimenter sat
down in front of the infant, and gently called the infant’s name. When the infant
looked at her, she slowly turned her head toward one of the toys until the infant
followed her head turn. Thus, by waiting until the infant turned to look where the
experimenter was looking, we ascertained that the infant had noticed where the
attentional focus of the experimenter was directed. This is important, because if
the infant was not aware that the experimenter was looking to a different object
than the infant, the infants would be less likely to point at the Out-of-focus dog.

3.1.4.1. In-focus condition. As soon as the infant followed the head turns of
the experimenter to look at the In-focus toy, the research assistant activated the
In-focus dog which began to move and bark. As soon as the dog was activated,
104 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

the experimenter said: “Oh, isn’t that beautiful?” This sequence continued until
5 s were completed. Infants received three trials.

3.1.4.2. Out-of-focus condition. Again, the experimenter called the infant’s name
and turned toward one of the dogs. As soon as the infants followed her gaze, the re-
search assistant activated the dog at which the experimenter was not looking (e.g.,
the active Out-of-focus dog). When the infant looked toward the active Out-of-focus
dog, the experimenter, while continuing to look at the inactive In-focus dog said,
“Oh, isn’t that beautiful?” The experimenter continued to emote until 5 s were
completed. Again, infants received three trials.

3.1.4.3. Coding and inter-rater reliability. A research assistant coded the data.
She had not conducted the study and was unaware of the hypotheses, and con-
sequently was blind to the experimental conditions. Three behavioral categories
were coded in the In- and Out-of-focus conditions. The first category was (1) gaze
at the active toys: this behavior was coded to determine whether the infants were
aware of the toys and found them attractive (cf. Moore & D’Entremont, 2001).
The other two behavioral categories consisted of combined behavioral sequences
that included (2) gaze directed to the person combined with a pointing gesture at
the active toy either within 2 s before gesture initiation, during gesture execution,
or within 2 s of gesture completion (GP) (Franco & Butterworth, 1996), and (3)
the same sequence as before followed by vocalizations (GVP). A typical sequence
of GVP included the infant looking at the experimenter, point at the object, look
at her again, vocalize, and then point to the target object. As before, and following
Legerstee et al. (1990), gaze direction to the person was operationalized as looks
towards the person’s face. Vocalizations were defined as sounds with a demon-
strative tonal quality. Vegetative sounds (hiccups and burps) and crying were not
coded. Because in Experiment 1 infants only pointed with extended arm and index
finger with other fingers loosely or tightly curled, this same definition was em-
ployed for coding points in Experiment 2. All the dependent variables were coded
without sound with the exception of vocalizations.
To check the reliability of the coder, another coder scored 30% of the sessions.
Kappas for gaze direction toward the person, vocalizations, and pointing were
0.93, 0.90, and 0.91, respectively.

3.2. Results

3.2.1. Gazes
All infants turned to look where the experimenter was looking initially and
hence knew where she was looking before they turned to look at the active dog
in either the In- or Out-of-focus condition. During the 5 s response time, infants
looked on average 80% to the active dog and 20% to the inactive dog. Consequently,
the difference in pointing to the In- and Out-of-focus conditions cannot be due to
salience, position, or attractiveness of one dog over another.
 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110 105

Table 3
Number of infants who produced either GP and GVP sequences or no points in the In- and Out-of-focus
conditions in Experiment 2
Condition GPa GVPb No point Total

In-focus 4 2 10 16
Out-of-focus 3 8 3 14
a Number of infants who produced point/gaze (GP) sequences.
b Number of infants who produced point/gaze/vocalization (GVP) sequences.

3.2.2. Pointing
Out of the 30 infants, 17 infants pointed. The total number of points produced
by the 17 infants was 37. Again, only the number of infants who pointed will be
discussed (see Table 3).
A chi-square test was performed to examine whether infants who pointed did so
differently across conditions. Results indicated a significant difference, χ2 (1, N =
30) = 5.12, P < .033, such that most infants that produced points and gaze (GP
and GPV) did so in the Out-of-focus condition (11 out of 14) versus the In-focus
condition (6 out of 16).

3.2.3. Out-of-focus condition

Of the 11 infants who pointed in the Out-of-focus condition, 3 produced a GP
sequence, and 8 a GVP (see Table 3). Thus, 8 out of the 11 infants that pointed in the
Out-of-focus condition vocalized and pointed to the toy to which the experimenter
did not look.

3.2.4. In-focus condition

Of the 16 infants in the In-focus condition, 4 produced a GP sequence, and
2 a GVP sequence. To find out whether more infants produced GVP sequences
in the Out- versus the In-focus condition, a chi-square test was performed to ex-
amine differences across conditions. Results indicated a significant difference,
χ2 (1, N = 30) = 6.69, P < .019. Most infants who engaged in GVP sequences
(8 out of 14) were subjects in the Out-of-focus condition. Thus, by 12 months
infants differentiate between the In- and Out-of-focus conditions, and use various
responses to try to direct people’s attention to a target object.

3.3. Discussion

Out of the 30 infants in Experiment 2, a total of 17 infants pointed (57%). This

is in keeping with the amount of pointing infants produced in Experiment 1 where
infants produced 56% of their points to people, and with the points observed in other
studies with infants of this age (Desrochers et al., 1995). In Moore and D’Entremont
(2001) study, only 11 of the 30 infants in the 10–15-month age group pointed (36%)
in the matched and mismatched conditions. More importantly however, most of
106 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

the infants that pointed in this study were in the Out-of-focus condition (11 out of
14), whereas in the Moore and D’Entremont only 2 out of 15 infants pointed in the
mismatched condition. Two controls may account for why infants pointed more
in the Out-of-focus condition in the current study. First, because we had waited
until the infants followed the head turns of the experimenter before activating the
dog on the opposite side, all infants in the Out-of-focus condition had noticed
that the experimenter was looking at a different dog. In addition, the experimenter
vocalized positively, while looking to a different dog than the one to which infants
were looking. This must have cued the infants to look her way, thereby noticing
that she was still attending to the other dog. Because the infants wanted to direct
her attention to the active/sounding dog, they alerted the experimenter through
vocalizing and pointing. Thus, it would appear that infants produce declarative
points at 12 months more often when partners are not attending to the object of
interest, and that cueing to the existence of the partner increases this behavior.

4. General discussion

The purpose of the present experiments was to assess whether activities such
as gaze following and declarative pointing involve an awareness of people as
intentional agents, or whether these behaviors are simply triggered by perceptual
cues such as movement and physical features emanating from people in dyadic and
triadic situations (Johnson et al., 1998, 2001; Moore & Corkum, 1994; Moore &
D’Entremont, 2001). To address these questions, we conducted two experiments. In
the first task of Experiment 1, we assessed whether infants could be conditioned to
follow the gaze in the direction to which a person or an object (equated on physical
features) turned (Johnson et al., 1998; Moore & Corkum, 1994). We found that
infants learned to follow the head turns/gaze of both the person and the inanimate
object. What does this say about the infants’ understanding of intentional agents?
Apparently, non-human primates exhibit evidence of gaze following. Recent data
(Hare, Call, Agnetta, & Tomasello, 2000) showed that chimpanzees, who do not
understand intentional behavior in others, are more likely (in a context of food
competition) to reach for food to which they notice that dominant chimpanzees
have no visual access. However, researchers concede that these skills, though
suggestive of some degree of cognitive flexibility, may not be akin to the kind
of understanding that humans hold about the similarity between others’ and own
visual experience. This same ability to understand self and others as similar may
also be linked to non-human primates not being able to use gestures declaratively
(Tomasello, 1995).
In Task 2 of Experiment 1, we investigated whether declarative pointing is
constrained to people, or whether it is generalized to a broader category such as
inanimate objects that look and act like humans. The same infants who had been
conditioned to follow the gazes/head turns of a person and an object were seen in
a production task. If the production of pointing is a result of particular perceptual
 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110 107

cues, then one would predict that infants produce points to both people and inan-
imate objects. However, in the Person condition infants more often coordinated
points with gaze and vocalizations toward the person than toward the object.
The results are consistent with those of others (Deak et al., 2000). These au-
thors found that the co-occurrence of gestures and gazes toward people character-
ize 12-month-olds’ exchanges with others in referential inducing contexts. They
interpreted that such co-occurrences are indicative of an awareness of others’ psy-
chological processes, such as attention and sharing.
That infants produce these behaviors more often to people than to inanimate
objects reveals that infants have different conceptions about people and objects,
namely, that one communicates with people and not with objects (Legerstee et al.,
2000). The data support developmental trends evident in the early months. From
an early age, infants categorize people and objects as distinct as indexed by their
differential responsiveness to each entity (see Spelke, Phillips, & Woodward, 1995;
Legerstee, 1992, 2001; Rakison & Poulin-Dubois, 2001 for reviews). This differ-
ential responsiveness may reflect learning constraints that aid infants in the process
of forming mature concepts (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Legerstee, 1997).
In Experiment 2, we addressed the proposition that the declarative points we
observed in Experiment 1, represented behaviors that were intended to either en-
hance the interaction or to direct the attention of the partner to an object of interest
(cf. Moore & D’Entremont, 2001). Infants were presented with an adult who ei-
ther looked at the same active/sounding object (In-focus condition) or at a different
one the infant was looking at (Out-of-focus condition). We found that the infants
produced significantly different types of responses in such conditions. The vocal-
izations together with gazing and pointing revealed that infants were engaging in
acts which have been called declarative points by others because with these ges-
tures infants seem “to single out an object of contemplation and offer it for another
human being to consider (Bates et al., 1975, p. 161).” This indicates that at 12
months infants regard humans as intentional agents because they attempt to redi-
rect their attention so that they may notice that infants are pointing at interesting
objects and events.
Why would the Moore and D’Entremont (2001) study find less overall pointing
among their 1-year-old subjects, and less pointing in the Out-of-focus condition
than the In-focus condition? As indicated by Deak et al. (2000), there are vari-
ous factors that affect infant joint visual attention. One of the factors to promote
such pointing is to optimize an awareness of infants of the changes of the adults’
gaze direction. More perceptually salient gestures of adults, such as talking while
looking at an object, might more reliably elicit communicative gestures such as
declarative pointing in infants (Deak et al., 2000). Thus, the experimenter’s vocal-
izations must have reminded infants to look her way. The infants thereby noticed
that she was looking at another object, and motioned her with vocalizations and
points to look to the one the infant found interesting and was looking at. Taken
together, the combined results suggest that by 12 months infants adopt the in-
tentional stance. They may be operating, as Bretherton (1991) contends, on an
108 M. Legerstee, Y. Barillas / Cognitive Development 18 (2003) 91–110

implicit awareness of others’ intentionality, much in the same way 3-year-olds

operate with grammatical rules, which they cannot state verbally. With develop-
ment, infants begin to point more often at an object when their partner’s line of
regard toward the object is blocked than when it is not (Butler, Caron, & Brooks,
2000, with 18-month-olds; Franco & Gagliano, 2001, with 18–23-month-olds).
These accomplishments demonstrate infants’ increasing sophistication as active,
competent social agents.
In conclusion, the inference drawn by Johnson et al. (2001) that gaze following
and declarative pointing during the first year of life represents the infants’ rep-
resentation of a “mentalistic agent” that is not restricted to people is untenable
in light of the available evidence. The findings indicate that 12-month-olds may
have begun to see people (but not objects) as psychological agents. This accom-
plishment may in turn sustain progress of joint attentional skills as infants begin
to “tune in” to others’ and get others to “tune in” to them. These behaviors are
not just intended to draw attention to self, or to enhance the situation (cf. Moore
& D’Entremont, 2001). Instead, they appear to be intended to share interesting
aspects of the environment with others. Such a remarkable level of social aware-
ness is a note worthy achievement in the social cognitive domain, and likely has
cascading developmental effects on the acquisition of a full-fledged theory of mind.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (410-01-0197) to M. Legerstee. Experiment 1 was part
of a Master’s thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, York University by Y. Barillas.
We would like to thank the research team for helping to conduct the experiments,
and the North York General Hospital for helping to recruit the participants. We are
grateful to Tricia Striano, in whose laboratory the infants of Experiment 2 were
filmed, and to Malinda Carpenter for insightful comments on earlier drafts of this
paper. Finally, we thank the mothers and infants who so generously donated their
time and energy to participate in this study.

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