Who's in the know? To a preschooler, the person doing the pointing

If you want a preschooler to get the point, point. That's a lesson that can be drawn from a new study in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.

As part of their investigation of how small children know what other people know, the authors, Carolyn Palmquist and Vikram K. Jaswal of the University of Virginia, found they were able to mislead preschoolers with the simple introduction of a pointing gesture.

"Children were willing to attribute knowledge to a person solely based on the gesture they used to convey the information," says Palmquist. "They have built up such a strong belief in the knowledge that comes along with pointing that it trumps everything else, including what they see with their eyes."

The authors showed 48 preschoolers, half of them boys and half girls, a videotape of two women, four cups, and a ball.

In each of four sequences, one woman said she was going to hide the ball under one of the cups. The other woman covered her eyes and turned to the wall.

The "hider" placed a barrier in front of the cups, so the children could see she was hiding the ball, but not which cup she hid it under.

The barrier was removed, the other woman turned around. Then, each sequence took one of three forms. In the "baseline" condition, both women sat with their hands in their laps.

In another condition, each grasped a different cup, and in another, each pointed at a different cup. The children were asked: "Which woman knows where the ball is?" In two of the trials, one woman was the hider; in the other two, the other was.

When both grasped the cup or when neither touched a cup, the children gave the correct answer about three times out of four.

Grasping was not a meaningful gesture to the children, the authors guessed, or they may have associated grasping with searching for the ball.

When both women pointed, however, the children chose the right person only about half the time, statistically, by chance.

To make sure the preschoolers hadn't ignored the question and inferred they were being asked which cup they would look under, the experimenters showed eight other children the pointing sequences and asked: "Which woman hid the ball?"

In this case, the children got it right three out of four times. So the first group knew who hid the ball; they just thought the other woman must also have had some intelligence about the ball's whereabouts.

"From an early age, when children see pointing, they understand it as an important gesture used in contexts of teaching and learning," Palmquist explains.

"Generally people point because they have good reason to do it." As a species humans are "uniquely inclined toward cooperative communication," she notes.

"This finding fits into that framework. The children are already expecting that people will be helpful and knowledgeable, especially since they're using these cues."

What to teach your children about Body Language

It is every parent's responsibility to socialise their children, that includes teaching them about our primary means of communication which is body language.

Essential for interpersonal and business success, body language should be taught to children at an early age so that they can mature with a skill set that will enrich their personal and working lives.

Start to teach your children about body language as soon as they are capable of understanding your instruction (around age 2) and build from there.

Use a good reference guide so that the children can see the behaviour and you can both talk about it. Also make sure that the guide you use is based on science and not on anecdotal information.

There are 10 things you can teach your child to help them develop social and interpersonal intelligence that will help them throughout their lives:

1. All nonverbal communication (body language) has meaning. Some you may not understand, nonetheless, it has meaning. In time I and your friends will teach you what different things mean.
2. Your brain controls all your physical movements as well as all the faces and gestures you make. You have control over your body and the kinds of messages that your body sends out. You need to be mindful of this in the same way that you have to watch what you say.
3. Your body language communicates all the emotions you feel, just as a baby communicates whether she is happy or not. It is evident for everyone to see. When you are happy and excited we can all see this by your smile, happy feet, and outstretched arms.
4. What your body says to me is more accurate than what you say and it speaks to me before you do. So always be aware that often we can tell what you are thinking or feeling before you speak.
5. You can get along better with friends if you read their body language because you'll be able to tell if they are happy or sad, mad or playful, quiet or excited. If you learn to read the body language of your friends, they will find great comfort in you because you care to know how they feel.
6. Just like words can hurt someone’s feelings, body language can do the same thing. When you roll your eyes at me or turn your back and walk away, it says, just as if you had shouted it, that you don’t care and don’t respect me.
7. You can use body language to let others know that you like them and care for them, without ever having to say a word. Just like when you hug me or hold my hand, I can tell you love me without having to say it.
8. When you want something, desire something, or seek something, your body speaks this very clearly. In the same way that when you want to leave or avoid someone, your body tells me how you feel. Your intentions are communicated by your body language also.
9. Some people are very sensitive to their body space and so when you get too close or sit too close they feel uncomfortable. Be aware that sometimes other children or adults need just a little bit more space.
10. If your own body ever feels uncomfortable around someone, please let me know when it happens so I can help you to understand why it is that you feel that way. And know this, because I know your brain is sensitive to your body, I will respect whatever it is that you feel when you say, “I don’t feel comfortable, especially when it is around someone else.”

For additional information check out the Psychology Today posts on the subject, under the author's nom de plume Spycatcher. Additional information and training programs are available at www.jnforensics.com.

Visual Processing 'Hinders Ability' To Read Body Language

Visual Processing 'Hinders Ability' To Read Body Language: Autism Study

With around half a million people in the UK affected by autism, the Durham University study suggests visual processing problems could be contributing to their day-to-day difficulties with social interaction.

The research showed that adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) found it difficult to identify emotions, such as anger or happiness, from short video clips of body movements without seeing faces or hearing sound.

Those adults who struggled most with this task also performed poorly when asked to detect the direction in which a group of dots moved coherently on a screen, thought to be due to visual processing problems.

People with autism often have difficulty in attributing mental states to others and this is thought to be one of the main causes of their struggle to know how other people feel. The Durham study, published in the academic journal Neuropsychologia, suggests visual processing problems may also be a contributing factor.