Pointing As A Socio-Pragmatic Cue To Particular vs. Generic Reference

Language Learning and Development
ISSN: 1547-5441 (Print) 1547-3341 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hlld20
Pointing As a Socio-Pragmatic Cue to Particular vs.

Generic Reference
Meredith Meyer & Dare A. Baldwin
To cite this article: Meredith Meyer & Dare A. Baldwin (2013) Pointing As a Socio-Pragmatic
Cue to Particular vs. Generic Reference, Language Learning and Development, 9:3, 245-265,
DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2013.753802
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2013.753802
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Download by: [De La Salle University Philippines] Date: 05 October 2015, At: 19:06
Language Learning and Development, 9: 245–265, 2013
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1547-5441 print / 1547-3341 online
DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2013.753802
Pointing As a Socio-Pragmatic Cue to Particular

vs. Generic Reference
Meredith Meyer
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan
Downloaded by [De La Salle University Philippines] at 19:06 05 October 2015
Dare A. Baldwin
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon
Generic noun phrases, or generics, refer to abstract kind categories (Dogs bark) rather than particular
individuals (Those dogs bark). How do children distinguish these distinct kinds of reference? We
examined the role of one socio-pragmatic cue, namely pointing, in producing and comprehending
generic versus particular reference. Study 1 demonstrated that parents of preschool-aged children
pointed more when referring to particular instances versus generic kinds. Studies 2 and 3 addressed
how children interpreted pointing when linguistic cues were ambiguous with respect to the generic
versus particular distinction, for example, They are afraid of raccoons said in the presence of several
dogs, where they could refer to the generic category (dogs) or a particular set (the/those dogs). Results
indicate only a partial socio-pragmatic sensitivity to pointing’s role in marking particular reference.
They additionally speak to issues related to children’s acquisition of generics and their expectations
regarding transmission of generic knowledge.
Generic noun phrases, or generics, are a common linguistic means by which category-wide
knowledge can be conveyed. For instance, the generic cats in Cats are furry indicates that fur-
riness is a property true of the category as a whole; in contrast, particular noun phrases refer
to actual or specific instances, as in My cat is furry. Generic language has been proposed as an
especially powerful and efficient means of conveying category knowledge to children (Gelman,
2003, 2004), yet little research has examined what sorts of socio-pragmatic information typi-
cally accompany the production of generic versus particular reference and whether these cues (if
present) could aid children in distinguishing between the two.
Questions of how socio-pragmatic information might differentiate generic versus particular
reference are motivated by the larger importance of how communication supports and con-
strains children’s category construction. That is, the ability to recognize the distinction between
We gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of Jason Dooley, Heather Gauthier-Bell, Katherine Robinson, and
Ava Schmidt, as well as the parents, teachers, and administrators of Mt. Olivet Preschool (Arlington, Virginia), Trinity
Preschool (Arlington, Virginia), and The Little French Preschool (Eugene, Oregon).
Correspondence should be addressed to Meredith Meyer, Department of Psychology, 530 Church Street, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. E-mail: mermeyer@umich.edu
246 MEYER AND BALDWIN
category-referring generic reference and specific-referring particular reference helps children rec-
ognize whether a property generalizes category-wide or should be restricted to a subset of individ-
uals. The attributions children make regarding causes and origins of category members’ properties
are also informed by generic versus particular interpretation; for instance, children are more likely
to treat properties predicated of generic referents as essential rather than incidental or acciden-
tal, and this effect is observed both in social and nonsocial domains (Cimpian & Cadena, 2010;
Cimpian & Erickson, 2012a; Cimpian & Markman, 2011). Thus, determining whether a per-
son intends to refer to categories or individuals is a fundamental step in constructing categories,
drawing inductive inferences, and acquiring beliefs regarding the social and nonsocial world.
Although distinguishing generic from particular is critical for drawing appropriate inferences
regarding the information speakers make available, it is far from trivial, as the ways in which
speakers express the two kinds of reference are complex. A suite of linguistic cues in both noun
and verb form as well as pragmatic and world knowledge cues work in concert to signal the
different types of reference (for reviews, see Cimpian & Markman, 2008, and Gelman, 2004).
Research on child comprehension suggests that children across the early preschool years begin to
flexibly integrate many of these cues in the service of distinguishing generic from particular (e.g.,
Cimpian & Markman, 2008; Cimpian, Meltzer, & Markman, 2011; Gelman & Raman, 2003;
Graham, Nayer, & Gelman, 2011; Hollander, Gelman, & Star, 2002). How do socio-pragmatic
cues function in this task?
Some speculative accounts have identified manual pointing gestures as an especially likely
type of socio-pragmatic cue involved in marking particular reference (e.g., Gelman, 2004;
Gelman & Raman, 2003). We took this proposal as the starting point for our research questions,
addressing the role of pointing in distinguishing generic from particular reference in three studies.
We asked two main questions: First, what is the nature of children’s input regarding pointing in
association with generic versus particular reference (Study 1)? Second, are children sensitive to
these social gestural cues in judging whether ambiguous language refers to generic or particular
referents (Studies 2 and 3)?
GESTURAL SOCIO-PRAGMATIC CUES TO GENERIC VERSUS

PARTICULAR REFERENCE
The prediction that parents preferentially use points to signal particularity has been most fully
developed within an account of the acquisition of generics known as the “generics-as-default”
position (e.g., Gelman, 2003, 2004; Leslie, 2008; Leslie & Gelman, 2012; Leslie, Khemlani, &
Glucksberg, 2011), which holds that the kind-based concepts to which generics refer are acquired
early and are cognitively basic. The idea that generics are default draws support from a number
of sources. Most importantly for the purposes of the current studies, generics are typically less
marked (e.g., most often with a bare plural in English as in Cats meow) than particular reference,
a pattern consistent with how default or stereotypical concepts are expressed (Levinson, 2000).
This lack of marking, in conjunction with generics’ cross-linguistic ubiquity (Gelman & Tardif,
1998; Mannheim, Gelman, Escalante, Huayhua, & Puma, 2011; Pelletier, 2010) and memory
and processing advantages in both children and adults (Cimpian & Erickson, 2012b; Leslie &
Gelman, 2012; Meyer, Gelman, & Stilwell, 2011) are argued to indicate that generics are a default
means of expressing and representing categories.
POINTING AS A SOCIO-PRAGMATIC CUE 247
Crucially, the generics-as-default proposal claims that generics are understood more by the
absence of cues than the presence of cues; for instance, the presence of definite singular arti-
cles, as in The cat is furry, or tense markers, as in Dogs barked, might be used to rule out a
default generic, kind-relevant interpretation. If this is correct, then children’s task is to learn the
markers of particularity used in their language, and adults are characterized as using cues to
mark particular reference so as to override or block children’s expectation of generic reference.
Importantly, such cues extend beyond linguistic markers to nonverbal information, and point-
ing is one such nonverbal gestural cue that has been nominated as a socio-pragmatic marker of
particularity (Gelman, 2004; Gelman & Raman, 2003).
The idea that pointing is enacted more frequently when discussing particular referents also
holds broader intuitive appeal. Because generics refer to categories rather than actual instances,
they are necessarily abstract; there are no actual or visible sets of referents that can be fully
representative of a generic category (Pelletier, 2010; Prasada, 2000). Rather, a generic concept
is a wholly mental representation. Pointing to a member of the kind while referring to the kind
itself (e.g., pointing to a bird while referring to birds generically) thus holds the potential to be
misleading (i.e., reference to an exemplar in the world is not the same as reference to a kind).
In contrast, pointing while discussing a specific instance (e.g., the bird [that can be seen in the
here-and-now]) features what is arguably a more felicitous match between gesture and referent.
Although the foregoing suggests a number of reasons to predict more pointing in associa-
tion with particular reference, alternative predictions may be drawn as well. For instance, adults’
ostensive pointing has been discussed within recent “natural pedagogy” accounts as one of a
suite of cues used to trigger pedagogical expectations on the part of young children (Csibra
& Gergely, 2006, 2009; Gergely, Egyed, & Király, 2007). Children are characterized as rec-
ognizing these cues as signals that kind-relevant generic knowledge is being conveyed to them
by expert adults; that is, children expect the information conveyed within pedagogical interac-
tions to have relevance beyond the specific environment in which the communication is taking
place.
In a description of a prototypical pedagogical interaction, Csibra and Gergely notably describe
pointing as a component of an interaction in which generic knowledge is conveyed: “If I point at
two aeroplanes and tell you that ‘aeroplanes fly,’ what you learn is not restricted to the particular
aeroplanes you see or to the present context, but will provide you generic knowledge about the
kind of artifact these planes belong to that is generalizable to other members of the category
and to variable contexts” (2009, p. 148). This description clearly captures a scenario in which
generic knowledge about a referred-to kind is conveyed, and in which the speaker is described
as directing points toward visible, specific particular referents. If indeed this scenario captures
the way in which points typically are enacted and interpreted during the transmission of generic
knowledge, one would predict points to be equally if not preferentially associated with generic
rather than particular reference.
STUDY 1
In light of the different possibilities regarding how pointing is employed in association with
generic versus particular reference, we developed Study 1. We recorded conversations between
mothers and children and assessed pointing during particular and generic utterances. We focused
on 3- and 4-year-old children, since it is during these years that children are developing adult-
like sensitivity to many other cues relevant for distinguishing generic from particular (e.g.,
Cimpian & Markman, 2008; Cimpian et al., 2011; Gelman & Raman, 2003; Hollander et al.,
2002).
We provided mother-child dyads with pictures of animals and human-made artifacts and
recorded and coded mothers’ speech and pointing gestures in association with generic and par-
ticular reference. Our main goal was to examine whether mothers pointed at different rates
depending on whether they were discussing particular instances vs. generic kinds. A secondary
question examined in this study was whether pointing would be modulated based on contex-
tual factors. Pointing is perhaps especially ideally suited to singling out a relevant instance
and/or making contrasts between individuals, a possibility we investigated by varying the num-
ber of possible recipients of a point by showing pictures of either one or two target exemplars.
We predicted that differences in the number of visible exemplars would influence mothers’
pointing in conjunction with particular reference; specifically, given the suitability of pointing
as a “singling out” device, we predicted that pointing would be especially frequent with ver-
bal particular reference when two target exemplars were displayed. In contrast, the increase in
number of exemplars was not predicted to promote pointing in conjunction with generic ref-
erence, as generics would not be used in the context of contrasting or singling out specific
instances.
METHOD
Participants
Twenty-four mothers and their 3- and 4-year-old children participated in dyadic conversation
about a series of pictures. Children were recruited from birth announcements published in local
newspapers, heard primarily English at home, and had no diagnosed language or other cognitive
delays. Although formal demographic information was not collected on the families that partici-
pated, the population from which the sample was recruited was largely middle- to upper-middle
class and primarily White. The final sample consisted of 12 3-year-olds (M = 43.13 months,
SD = 2.54; 7 female) and 12 4-year-olds (M = 52.72 months, SD = 3.8; 7 female). Data from
five additional dyads were excluded from analyses for experimenter error (n = 1), child’s unwill-
ingness to complete the task (n = 1), mother’s pointing gestures not visible from video footage
(n = 2), and child having a suspected (but not formally diagnosed) language disorder as reported
by the parents (n = 1).
Materials
Pictures were constructed specifically for the purpose of this study and were cartoon-like child-
friendly color illustrations. Half the pictures were of common animals, and half were of common
artifacts (human-made objects). Additionally, half the pictures featured a single exemplar of the
target animal or artifact, while the other half featured two exemplars, one of which was in an
“active” state and one of which was in an “inactive” state (Table 1).
TABLE 1
Items Used as Target Pictures in Study 1
Single Exemplar Double Exemplar
Cat (eating) Parrots (preening or not)

Butterfly (flying) Kangaroos (hopping or not)
Raccoon (walking) Seals (eating fish or not)
Airplane (flying) Radios (on or off)
Couch (static) Lamps (on or off)
Bus (driving) Sprinklers (on or off)
Procedure
Sessions took place in a child-friendly lab testing room and were video-recorded. Mothers were
instructed to go through the pictures much as they would with a picture book at home, and they
were seated at a 90◦ angle from the child at a low, child-sized table. No strict time limit was
provided for the session, though a suggested duration of five to fifteen minutes was offered. The
experimenter then left the room until the mother signaled that the session was over. Pictures
were grouped in three blocks with four pictures, with each block containing two animal pictures
(one single-exemplar, one double-exemplar) and two artifact pictures (one single-exemplar, one
double-exemplar). Blocks occurred in all six possible orders. An equal number of children of
each age group saw each of the six orders.
All on-task utterances were transcribed from the session recording within ELAN 3.5.0 (a
multimedia linguistic annotator), and time of utterance onset and offset was also annotated.
Transcribed utterances were then classified as particular, generic, or other (Table 2). Such clas-
sification was done blind to any visual access to the mother-child exchange, which ensured that
gestural information would not bias a coder’s classification of utterances. Utterances coded as
particular and generic included only reference to the specific depicted target exemplars or their
counterpart generic kind, respectively. If reference was to particular instances not in the pictures,
some other nontarget external particular referent, or to a generic kind to which the target exem-
plars did not belong, the utterance was coded as other, as our main goal was to compare pointing
during particular here-and-now reference versus pointing during generic reference to the kind.
TABLE 2
Sample Utterances from Study 1
Sample Utterances Type
Is that bird cleaning his wing? Particular

The seal’s going to share his fish Particular
Do you know where kangaroos live? Generic
. . . a cat’s whiskers stick out as far as its body Generic
Gramma’s cat is called Mango, right? Other (external particular)
(Sibling) had a hamster at school Other (external particular)
Hamsters look funny when they eat Other (nontarget generic)
For instance, if a target picture contained a picture of a cat, reference to that specific cat would be
coded as particular, and reference to cats generically would be coded as generic; however, ref-
erence to an actual pet cat at home, a hamster at home, or hamsters generically would be coded
as other. Two independent coders classified all utterances. Agreement between two independent
coders was excellent (kappa = .86).
Pointing to target instances was also annotated within ELAN by a primary coder with the
sound turned off so that coding was blind to utterance content. A point was considered to com-
mence when two conditions were met: First, the index finger had to be fully extended, and
second, the index finger had to be three or fewer inches from the surface of the page (judg-
ment of this distance relied on subjective estimation). A point was considered to be completed
when the index finger was withdrawn from full extension. A second coder independently coded
point presence or absence for 20% of the utterances judged to be either generic or particu-
lar. Agreement regarding point presence/absence was excellent (kappa = .98). An utterance
was considered to be accompanied by a point if a point was initiated any time shortly before
(100 ms before utterance onset), during, or shortly after (100 ms after utterance offset) an
utterance.
RESULTS
Proportions of generic and particular utterances accompanied by points in single- and double-
exemplar contexts were calculated for each mother, an approach that controlled for the fact that
mothers produced more particular utterances than generic utterances overall, a feature of moth-
ers’ speech seen in other studies of generic language as well (e.g., Gelman, Coley, Rosengren,
Hartman, & Pappas, 1998). Data from two dyads were excluded because the mothers provided
no generic utterances at all, meaning that no proportional data reflecting frequency of generic
pointing could be calculated.
A 2 (age group: 3-year-old vs. 4-yr-old) × 2 (utterance type: generic vs. particular) × 2 (pic-
ture type: single- vs. double-exemplar) mixed between-within ANOVA was run, with age as a
between-subjects factor and utterance type and picture type as within-subjects factors. (The factor
of animal vs. artifact picture type participated in no main effects or interactions with age, utter-
ance type, or picture type and was thus dropped from the primary reported analysis.) Age was not
a significant factor in any main effects or interactions, all ps > .05. There was a main effect for
utterance type, with particular utterances receiving proportionately more points (M = .39, SD =
.17) than generic utterances (M = .19, SD = .23), F(1, 19) = 14.67, p = .001, partial η2 = .44.
There was also a main effect for picture type, with utterances during viewing of double-exemplar
pictures receiving proportionately more points (M = .35, SD = .21) than single-exemplar pic-
tures (M = .23, SD = .19), F(1, 19) = 7.25, p = .02, partial η2 = .28. The utterance type ×
picture type interaction was not significant, F(1, 19) = 1.31, p = .27. However, when examin-
ing differences between pointing in single- vs. double-exemplar pictures separated by utterance
type in planned pairwise comparisons, proportion of particular utterances receiving points in
double-exemplar pictures was marginally significantly higher than in single-exemplar pictures
(M double-exemplar = .45, SD = .24; M single-exemplar = .32, SD = .22; t(21) = 1.97, p =
.06), but proportions of generic utterances receiving points in the two types of pictures were not
FIGURE 1 Proportion of generic and particular utterances in single- and

double-exemplar pictures accompanied by points in Study 1. Error bars
represent ±1 standard error of the mean. ∗ p < .05; mar., p = .06.
different (M double-exemplar = .23, SD = .22; M single-exemplar = .16, SD = .29; t(21) =

1.40, p = .19) (Figure 1).1
DISCUSSION
In summary, pointing did indeed appear to be proportionately more frequent during particular
reference than generic reference, supporting predictions regarding pointing’s role in marking
particularity derived from the generics-as-default position (e.g., Gelman, 2004). Also, moth-
ers tended to point more during discussion of pictures featuring multiple target referents
(double-exemplar pictures) than single referents (single-exemplar pictures), and this increase
was especially observed when mothers were accompanying particular (vs. generic) utterances
with points. Put another way, rates of generic pointing were overall low and less sensitive to
variation in number or variety of exemplars, whereas particular pointing was high and especially
promoted in double-exemplar pictures. Overall, then, it appears that pointing as a gestural means
of denoting particular status was reliably present in the input.
1 One concern arising from this analysis relates to the fact that item set was confounded with the single- vs. double-
exemplar number dimension; thus, a possibility is that item effects were responsible for the differences observed in
the main effect for single- vs. double-exemplar pictures. However, item-based analysis (i.e., picture-by-picture analysis)
suggests this is not the case; the distribution of points in the single-exemplar vs. double-examplar sets (averaged across
parents) was entirely non-overlapping. Thus, no single picture elicited unusual patterns of pointing driving the observed
effect of double-exemplar pictures promoting more pointing.
STUDY 2
Parents were more likely to accompany particular reference with pointing. This finding motivated
Study 2, which addressed whether children interpreted points as being indicative of particularity.
Pointing is an especially promising candidate as a cue that children would notice and use to draw
inferences about the generic versus particular referential intent of a speaker, as prior research
has established that caregivers’ pointing is effective with young children both as an attention-
directing device and as a referentially communicative tool, at least within the context of ostensive
labeling. Even infants orient their own attention according to parents’ points and, in cases of
word learning, use points to appropriately map a word onto a referent (e.g., Booth, McGregor,
& Rohlfing, 2008; Butterworth & Itakura, 2000; Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998; Harris,
Barlow-Brown, & Chasin, 1995; Hollich, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2000). By the age of 3,
children can use a speaker’s points and other gestures to override the assumption that a novel
word refers to a whole object rather than a component part (Saylor, Sabbah, & Baldwin, 2002).
Also by the age of 3, children use the absence of pointing to infer that a novel label does not
refer to a particular object; in at least some communicative contexts, they expect instead that
only objects to which a person points while labeling should license a word-to-referent mapping
(Merriman & Evey, 2005; Merriman, Marazita, Jarvis, Evey-Burkey, & Biggins, 1995). In light
of such early sensitivity to pointing in other contexts, then, it is possible children would similarly
use it to inform disambiguation of generic versus particular.
Previous studies have already demonstrated that even two-year-old children are sensitive to
many of the linguistic particular-marking cues used to differentiate generic from particular, such
as the use of determiners (e.g., this dog) (Gelman & Raman, 2003; Graham et al., 2011). We thus
chose to test children’s interpretation of language ambiguous with respect to particular versus
generic reference (methodology adapted from Cimpian & Markman, 2008). For example, chil-
dren saw a picture in which there were three dogs depicted, and the experimenter said, “They are
afraid of raccoons.” They is ambiguous as to whether it refers to the generic kind or particular
individuals. We then manipulated the presence of pointing to investigate whether these points
affected children’s interpretation of reference as generic or particular. In a Point condition, the
speaker pointed to two of the three dogs in conjunction with the spoken sentence, whereas in a
No Point condition, no pointing was provided. Participants were then asked who possessed the
relevant property, for example, “Who’s afraid of raccoons?” Responses could be either generic
(e.g., dogs) or particular (e.g., the dogs/those dogs). This design thus enabled a test of children’s
socio-pragmatic sensitivity to points independent of sensitivity to linguistic marking cues.
Given the fact that pointing in children’s input tends to be preferentially used to identify and
distinguish particular referents (revealed by the findings from Study 1), and in light of the largely
positive results from other studies regarding children’s ability to use points to infer what a speaker
intends to label an object, we predicted that children also would use points to infer that a speaker
intended particular (vs. generic) reference. Specifically, we predicted that children would be
more likely to draw the inference that the experimenter’s points indicated particular reference to
the subset that had received the points. Such a conclusion would be reflected in lower rates of
generic responding in the Point condition relative to the No Point condition.
We also recorded and analyzed the gestures of participants. This was undertaken as a
secondary measure of whether participants’ responses in the Point condition were actually
indicative of having recognized the experimenter’s points as referring to a specific subset. The
most unambiguous means of indicating this understanding would be to both provide particular
responses (e.g., these dogs) and to point or otherwise mark the same instances that the experi-
menter had pointed to (e.g., if the experimenter had pointed only to Dog 1 and Dog 2 but passed
over Dog 3 while stating that they are afraid of raccoons, subjects who recognized such points
as particular-referring would also be expected to point to Dog 1 and Dog 2 as they provided their
response). We refer to this style of pointing as “matching pointing” in the sense that targets of
participants’ pointing matched that provided by the experimenter earlier.
METHOD
Participants
A final sample of 48 3- and 4-year-old children and 24 adults participated in Study 2. Children had
no diagnosed language or other cognitive delays and were recruited from local birth announce-
ments. As in Study 1, no formal demographic information was collected, but the sample was
drawn from a largely White, middle- to upper-middle class community. The final child sample
consisted of 24 3-year-olds (M = 40.71 months, SD = 3.52; 6 female) and 24 4-year-olds (M =
53.79 months, SD = 3.12; 15 female). Data from nine children were excluded from analyses for
experimenter error (n = 3) and the child’s inability or unwillingness to complete the task (n = 6).
Adults were college students and received course credit for participation.
Materials
Six properties and animal types were used in the current study (Table 3). Prior research with the
same properties had established that both adults and children could interpret them as applying
to both individuals and animal kinds (Cimpian & Markman, 2008, Study 1), suggesting they
were appropriately ambiguous in scope for the current study. Six pictures were created, with
each picture featuring three exemplars of a given item (e.g., three dogs). Exemplars were created
from photographs of one animal, with each photograph manipulated to vary slightly in size and
orientation. Animals were depicted against a realistic background (e.g., dogs in a yard).
Procedure
Pictures were grouped in blocks of two, and the blocks were presented in all six possible orders.
Participants were randomly assigned to either a Point or No Point condition, and an equal number
of participants in each age group and condition saw each order. Participants in the Point con-
dition heard the experimenter say, “Let me tell you something,” and then saw the experimenter
point back and forth between two of the three referents twice at the same time the experimenter
provided the associated property, for example, “They are afraid of raccoons” + point to Dog 1,
Dog 2, Dog 1, Dog 2 (Figure 2). In this way, the experimenter passed over (i.e., did not point to)
one exemplar (e.g., Dog 3) while pointing to the two target exemplars. Stress was placed slightly
on the object within the sentence (e.g., raccoons) but was otherwise unmarked prosodically.
Participants in the No Point condition heard the same property but saw no pointing. After the
experimenter provided the property, children were asked to tell a puppet what they had heard,
for example, “Can you tell Mr. Bear—who’s afraid of raccoons?” Verbal responses were then
TABLE 3
Items and Properties from Studies 2 and 3
Item Properties
Study 2
Bird afraid of mice
Cat like to play with toy cars
Dog afraid of raccoons
Fish like to hide behind rocks
Horse eat broccoli without chewing
Rabbit sleep on their sides

Study 3
Bird afraid of mice/like to splash in puddles
Cat like to play with toy car/afraid of kids
Cow eat broccoli without chewing/climb hills really slowly
Dog afraid of raccoons/like to eat bread
Frog like to hide behind rocks/like to hop in circles
Rabbit sleep on their tummies/don’t like yellow grass
Boat have loud horns/have metal pieces on the bottom
Car have plastic pieces in tires/have windshield wipers that squeak a little
Clock have switches in the back/have gold wires inside
Crayon work well in the rain/made with a special kind of wax
Lamp cost a lot of money/have switches that you press
TV have red wires inside/have square buttons
recorded and coded according to generic (e.g., dogs), particular (e.g., these dogs), or other form
(e.g., the bare singular dog). Targets of children’s pointing (when pointing was present) were
additionally coded offline from video footage of the child sample, which was obtained for all
testing sessions except for two participants. An independent coder checked approximately 20%
of the videotaped children’s trials and coded verbal responses and targets of pointing to ensure
reliability of response coding; agreement was excellent for both classification of verbal responses
as generic, particular, or other (kappa = .88), and for judgment of targets of pointing (kappa =
.94). Judgment of the first coder was used in cases of disagreement. Pointing and target of pointing
for the adult sample were noted during the testing session.
RESULTS
Mean percentage of generic responses was used as the dependent variable. Responses coded as
other were not included in the calculation of the percentages presented in this analysis; thus,
particular responding relative to generic responding can be inferred from the generic percentages
presented here. Bare singulars (e.g., dog) were the most common form of response coded as other;
14 instances were observed (accounting for slightly under 10% of the total number of responses),
and they were unevenly distributed across participants, items, and point versus no-point condition.
A 2 (age: 3-year-old, 4-year-old, adult) × 2 (condition: Point vs. No Point) ANOVA was
conducted on percentage of generic responses. The only significant effect observed was for age,
F(2, 66) = 38.27, p < .001, partial η2 = .54. Tukey HSD post-hoc comparisons revealed that
FIGURE 2 Schematic of experimenter’s points and utterances in Studies

2 and 3.
adults produced significantly fewer generic responses (M = 14.61%, SD = 31.59) than either
3-year-olds (M = 80.42%, SD = 33.93) or 4-year-olds (M = 88.89%, SD = 29.35), ps < .001.
Three- and four-year-olds did not differ from each other, p > .05. There was also no effect for
pointing condition, with generic responding in the Point condition not significantly different from
the No Point condition, F(1, 66) = .65, p = .42. Finally, the interaction was not significant,
F(2, 66) = .07, p = .93 (Figure 3). Results thus did not support the hypothesis that children
would interpret points as indicative of particularity; instead, regardless of condition, children gave
FIGURE 3 Mean percent generic responses by condition and age group

for Study 2. Error bars represent ± 1 standard error of the mean. ∗ p < .01.
primarily generic responses. In comparison, adults behaved differently than children, responding
very rarely with generics. Their generic vs. particular responses were also not influenced by the
point condition; they provided particular responses at equal rates regardless of whether they had
seen pointing or not.
Matching points were also analyzed within the Point condition. Participants were classified as
being either “matchers” (providing matching points or verbal indication [e.g., the two dogs on the
left] of referring to the same specific instances the experimenter had pointed to on at least four
out of six trials) or “nonmatchers” (providing matching points or matching verbal indication on
fewer than four trials). Fisher’s exact comparisons revealed significant differences, with adults
more likely to be matchers (11/12) than 3-year-olds (0/12) or 4-year-olds (1/12), ps < .01. The
only child participant who was classified as a matcher provided matching points (in association
with particular responses) on all six trials. Interestingly, he also showed additional evidence of
having interpreted the experimenter’s points as referring to a particular subset by spontaneously
asking about the passed-over referent on several trials, for example, “These two dogs are afraid
of raccoons (+ point to Dog 1 and Dog 2) . . . So what’s that one afraid of (+ point to Dog 3)?”
No other matching pointing was observed in any other child, either in conjunction with generic
or particular verbal responses; thus, 23 out of the 24 children in the Point condition gave no
indication in their gesture of referring to the subset that the experimenter had pointed to.
DISCUSSION
Results from Study 2 suggested that, contrary to predictions, children did not recognize points as
indicative of particular reference. Given children’s very low particular verbal response rates as
well as the striking absence of matching pointing, there was almost no indication that children
used the experimenter’s points to draw the pragmatic conclusion that she was referring to the
pointed-to subset. In contrast to children, adults showed clear evidence for having recognized
the points as referring to a specific subset, providing both particular forms and matching points
or matching verbal indication in their responses within the Point condition. (Note that adults’
responses in the No Point condition also tended to be particular; however, in this condition adults
actually never pointed, and their verbal responses appeared to refer to all the instances in the
picture, for example, The dogs said in the presence of the picture with no pointing would likely
be taken to mean the dogs [in the picture]. Thus, although adults’ linguistic responses were
uniformly particular in both the Point and No Point conditions, the difference in their gestures
between the two conditions indicates that they interpreted the experimenter’s points to refer to a
specific subset in the Point condition.).
Children in both the Point and No Point conditions instead typically interpreted the ambiguous
pronoun they in sentences such as They are afraid of raccoons to refer to the generic category, for
example, dogs in general. Adults’ opposite tendency to reject a generic interpretation irrespective
of the presence or absence of points has interesting implications that will be taken up in the
General Discussion; however, most importantly, adults did interpret the experimenter’s points
(when present) as referring to a particular subset, as they provided both particular responses and
matching points or verbal indication in the Point condition.
STUDY 3
Although it appears as if points were not sufficient to mark reference as particular in the context
created in Study 2, it was still possible that children might evidence socio-pragmatic sensitiv-
ity to points in another scenario. Study 3 pursued this possibility. The results from Study 1, the
input-based study, informed the creation of such a scenario. Recall that in Study 1, parents were
especially likely to use points in cases when different visible referents were present, that is, to
increase pointing in association with particular reference during double-exemplar pictures, likely
in an attempt to single out or contrast instances. Although multiple exemplars were also featured
in Study 2, there was arguably little other social or contextual information to suggest that contrast-
ing or singling out was a communicative goal of the speaker. To promote this kind of contrastive
interpretation, Study 3 presented children with a scenario in which socio-pragmatic factors were
much more likely to indicate that a point was meant to refer to contrasted particular referents.
Specifically, in the condition of interest (the Two Subset Point condition), two different subsets
received points as two separate properties were predicated of an ambiguous they; for instance,
children saw a picture of four dogs, and the experimenter pointed to Dog 1 and Dog 2 while
saying They are afraid of raccoons and to Dog 3 and Dog 4 while saying They like to eat bread. In
principle, there is no reason that the generic kind could not possess both the provided properties,
as properties were not inherently contrastive. However, in this scenario, the experimenter was
observed to make an intentional and effortful switch between the targets of her points, which
plausibly would only occur if there were a pragmatic need to do so. This need would only arise if
the properties were predicated of contrasted and therefore particular referents; if the points were
accompanying reference to the generic kind, there is no clear reason for the speaker to expend any
effort in switching the target of her points. Such pragmatic inference is notably consistent with
the Gricean Maxim of Quantity, which states that individuals expect speakers to communicate as
much information as needed without being excessive (e.g., Grice, 1975). In accordance with this
principle, listeners would be prompted by the presence of target-switching pointing to assume
such pointing was necessary rather than needlessly excessive, and thus to interpret the points as
contrastive and particular-referring. We predicted that generic responding would be reduced in
frequency when children were provided with contrastive pointing, in comparison to the No Point
condition in which no pointing was featured.
In addition to the Two Subset and No Point conditions, we created a third condition in which
pointing was present but the targets of the experimenter’s points did not change (One Subset
Point). The creation of this condition was motivated by the following: If children did indeed
provide more particular responses in the Two Subset Point condition vs. the No Point condition
(as predicted), this difference could have arisen simply because children saw more pointing in
the Two Subset Point scenario than they did in the Point condition in Study 2 (i.e., the prior study
that did not yield any differences between the Point and No Point conditions). If sheer amount
of pointing matters, any particular responses observed in the current study might have been due
simply to the increase in number of points. The One Subset Point condition, in which amount of
pointing was equated to that seen in the Two Subset Point condition, but in which pointing did
not switch targets, provided information regarding the viability of this alternative explanation.
Study 3 also addressed a factor that may have contributed to children’s high rates of generic
responding in Study 2. Specifically, items in Study 2 consisted only of pictures of animals. Both
children and adults typically produce more generics about animals than about artifacts (e.g.,
Brandone & Gelman, 2009; Gelman et al., 1998; Gelman, Goetz, Sarnecka, & Flukes, 2008),
which might lead children to expect animals to be discussed generically in the current exper-
imental context. This potential bias may have been so strong as to override any probabilistic
gestural cues that might have suggested otherwise. Thus, in Study 3 we included artifacts to
assess whether there was any difference in generic interpretation based on item type, and further
if there was an interaction between pointing and item type. If the use of animals in Study 2 did
indeed promote generic thinking in children in such a way that it swamped a weaker tendency to
interpret points as particular, perhaps pointing might nevertheless lead to particular interpretation
for items that were less likely to promote such generic thinking (i.e., artifacts).
METHOD
Participants
A final sample of 72 3- and 4-year-old children participated. Children had no diagnosed language
or other cognitive delays and were recruited from published birth announcements. As in the prior
studies, no formal demographic information was collected, but the population from which the
sample was recruited was primarily White and middle- to upper-middle class. The final sample
consisted of 36 3-year-olds (M = 43.31 months, SD = 2.91; 21 female) and 36 4-year-olds
(M = 54.78 months, SD = 2.90; 20 female). Data from seven children were excluded from
analyses for experimenter error (n = 2) and child’s not completing the task (n = 5). Given that
Study 2 demonstrated that adults already interpreted points as particular-referring in contexts
featuring more minimal pragmatic cues to pointing’s function, we did not include a comparison
group of adults but rather focused exclusively on children.
Materials
The same animal types from Study 2 were used with two exceptions, namely fish being replaced
with frogs and horses being replaced with cows. These changes were instituted because fish is an
irregular plural, and horse ends phonetically with the same unvoiced sound (/s/) used to pluralize
many nouns. This change thus simplified and standardized the target objects’ pluralized forms.
The same six properties from Study 2 were used, and an additional six properties were generated
for these items as well. Six common human-made artifacts were also chosen, and two properties
were generated for each of these items (Table 3). Twelve pictures were created, with each picture
featuring four exemplars of a given item (e.g., four dogs). Within each picture, exemplars were
photographs varying slightly in size and orientation and set in a realistic background (e.g., dogs
in a field, crayons on a table).
Procedure
The experimenter sat at a 90◦ angle from the child at a low table. Pictures were grouped in two
item-type blocks, one containing the six animal pictures and the other the six artifact pictures.
Within both item type blocks, pictures were grouped into three pairs, which appeared in all six
possible picture orders. Half the participants saw the animal block first, and half saw the artifact
block first. An equal number of participants in each block order, age group, and condition saw
each of the six picture orders. Assignment to one of three conditions was random (Two Subset
Point, One Subset Point, or No Point). Participants in the Two Subset Point condition heard, “Let
me tell you something,” and then saw the experimenter point back and forth between two of
the four exemplars a total of four times at the same time the experimenter provided Property
1 (e.g., “They are afraid of raccoons” + point to Dog 1, Dog 2, Dog 1, Dog 2) and then saw
the experimenter point between the other two targets during the Property 2 utterance (e.g., “And
they like to eat bread” + point to Dog 3, Dog 4, Dog 3, Dog 4). As in Study 2, slight stress
was placed on the object within the sentences (e.g., raccoon and bread) but the sentence was
otherwise prosodically unmarked. The side on which the first pointed-to subset was positioned
on the page (rightmost two or leftmost two) was alternated every other picture. Participants in the
No Point condition heard the same properties but saw no pointing. Participants in the One Subset
Point condition saw and heard the same thing except that the same subset (e.g., only Dog 1 and
Dog 2) was pointed to during delivery of both property-predicating sentences.
Properties (and pointing bouts, if present) were provided twice. After the experimenter pro-
vided the properties, participants were asked to tell the puppet “Mr. Bear” what they had been
told, for example, “Can you tell Mr. Bear—who’s afraid of raccoons?” or “—who likes to eat
bread?” Being asked to report on Property 1 versus Property 2 was counterbalanced within sub-
jects, with half the animals and half the objects having Property 1 requested, and the other half
having Property 2 requested. Across all children, Property 1 and Property 2 for each set of prop-
erties was requested an equal number of times. Children’s verbal responses were recorded and
coded as generic, particular, or other using the same criteria as for Study 2. Targets of children’s
pointing (when pointing was present) were additionally coded during the task and confirmed via
offline video footage of the child sample, which was obtained for all testing sessions except for
three due to equipment failure and two due to experimenter failure to record. Of the children
who were recorded, an independent coder classified approximately 20% of their verbal responses
and targets of pointing. Reliability for both was excellent (verbal response kappa = .83, gesture
coding kappa = .92). In cases of disagreement, the first coder’s judgments were used.
RESULTS
As in Study 2, mean percentage of generic responses was used as the dependent variable. Also
as in Study 2, responses coded as other were not included in the calculation of this percent-
age. Responses deemed as other were typically bare singulars (e.g., dog). Sixty instances of bare
singulars were observed (accounting for almost 14% of the total number of responses). They
were largely unevenly distributed across items, point condition, and children, except for two chil-
dren, who provided bare singulars on 100% of trials and were thus excluded from analysis of
generic responding. A 2 (age: 3-year-old vs. 4-year-old) × 3 (point condition: no-point, one sub-
set point, two subset point) × 2 (item type condition: animal vs. artifact) ANOVA was conducted
on percentage of generic responses, with age and point condition as between-subjects factors and
item type condition as a within-subjects factor. The only significant effect was a main effect for
condition, F(2, 64) = 7.95, p = .001, ηp 2 = .20. Tukey HSD post-hocs revealed the predicted dif-
ferences: Generic responding in the Two Subset Point condition (M = 50.70%, SD = 49.08) was
significantly lower than in the One Subset Point (M = 86.76%, SD = 28.51) and No Point con-
ditions (M = 87.66%, SD = 25.36), ps < .01. Generic responding did not differ between the
One Subset Point and No Point conditions, however, p > .05 (Figure 4). No other main effects or
interactions were significant, p > .05.
Children’s own pointing gestures accompanying their utterances were also examined. Children
were classified as “matchers” (providing matching points on at least eight out of 12 trials) or
FIGURE 4 Mean percent generic responses by condition and age group

in Study 3. Error bars represent ± 1 standard error of the mean. ∗ p < .01.
“nonmatchers” (providing matching points on fewer than eight trials). Children in the Two Subset
Point condition were more likely to be matchers (10/24) than children in the One Subset Point
condition (0/24), p < .01. Thus, children in the Two Subset Point condition were more likely
to demonstrate in their gesture that they interpreted the experimenter’s points as referring to a
particular subset. Furthermore, these matching points were notably always in conjunction with
particular verbal responses. In contrast, no generic responses in either the Two Subset Point or
One Subset Point conditions were accompanied by matching points.
In summary, results supported the primary hypothesis that 3- and 4-year-old children would
be more likely to recognize target switching points to be indicative of particularity; when the
experimenter pointed to two different subsets while predicating properties of an ambiguous plu-
ral referent (they), children were less likely to expect the referent/s to be the generic kind relative
to both a One Subset Point condition as well as the No Point condition. This effect was observed
independent of item type (animal vs. artifact), suggesting it was only the target-switching
“contrastive” points that prompted children’s particular interpretations. Finally, children’s own
gestures also indicated that target-switching contrastive points were more likely to prompt partic-
ular interpretations, as children who had seen such contrastive points were more likely to produce
matching points during their own responses.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Recognizing the difference between generic and particular reference is fundamental to under-
standing whether information is relevant to categories generally or is only relevant to specific
individuals, meaning that the ways in which children detect and respond to generic versus par-
ticular reference presented in everyday interactions can have profound effects on their inductive
inferences and understanding of the world. Although prior research has focused on how children
make this differentiation (Cimpian & Markman, 2008; Cimpian et al., 2011; Gelman & Raman,
2003; Hollander et al., 2002), the current studies represent the first investigation of how parents
use socio-pragmatic gestural cues to mark particular reference as distinct from generic reference,
and how children respond to such gestures.
Pointing has been suggested to be a particular-marking device that, along with linguistic and
pragmatic cues, serves to override a default generic interpretation (Gelman, 2004; Gelman &
Raman, 2003). In accordance with this claim, and in keeping with the intuition that points directed
to actual particular instances display a more accurate referential match than pointing while dis-
cussing abstract kinds, we found that mothers reliably produced more points in conjunction with
statements about particular instances as opposed to generic kinds. This was especially true when
pointing was used in situations where multiple possible referents were visible (Study 1).
The use of points to convey particular reference is also notable from the perspective of natu-
ral pedagogy accounts, which describe a suite of cues, including points, as signaling to children
that kind-relevant information is being conveyed (Csibra & Gergely, 2006, 2009; Gergely et al.,
2007). Proponents of natural pedagogy have never claimed that ostensive cues such as pointing
are exclusively employed to convey kind-relevant knowledge; however, researchers may draw this
inference given the lack of focus in the pedagogy literature on any other function of ostensive ges-
ture. Our data clearly caution against drawing such an inference, as results of the current study
indicate that points are actually not typically used to refer to generic kinds, at least in the contexts
we examined. Determining exactly how ostensive cues are employed as pedagogical devices
and the extent to which they are used to communicate kind-relevant versus particular-relevant
knowledge will be an important pursuit in elucidating how and when children’s pedagogical
expectations are instantiated.
The current studies also addressed children’s sensitivity to points in the context of resolv-
ing linguistic reference ambiguous to generic versus particular status. Only partial sensitivity to
pointing was shown. In Study 2, in which only one subset received points and one property was
described, children did not interpret points as particular-referring, whereas adults did. However,
in Study 3, children were more likely to interpret contrastive points as referring to separate par-
ticular subsets. Another noteworthy aspect of the data is that, on the whole, children’s responses
were overwhelmingly generic. In Study 2, in which points were directed toward a single specific
subset, generic responding was almost at ceiling regardless of the presence or absence of point-
ing. Adults’ performance in Study 2 further highlights the strength of children’s generic bias;
unlike children, nearly all adults who had seen pointing interpreted the points as referring to the
subset that had received the points. And although pointing to different particular subsets did lead
to a significant reduction in children’s generic interpretation in Study 3, it is nevertheless notable
that almost 50% of children’s responses in that condition were still generic.
Children’s tendency to interpret reference as generic, often even in the presence of cues that
were highly suggestive of particular reference, seems at first surprising given research demon-
strating an even earlier-developed sensitivity to pointing as a referential labeling device (e.g.,
Booth et al., 2008; Merriman & Evey, 2005) and ability to discern a speaker’s referential inten-
tion from in-the-moment cues such as gaze and gesture (e.g., Baldwin, 1993; Saylor, Sabbagh, &
Baldwin, 2002). In contrast, in resolving generic versus particular reference, there appears to be a
striking disconnect between what parents reliably make available in gestural cues to particularity
and how children actually respond to these cues. Why were children relatively insensitive to such
cues, instead favoring overwhelmingly generic interpretations of an adult’s reference? There are
at least two explanations, which do not necessarily compete with each other.
First, children’s generic interpretations appear to be highly consistent with a generics-as-
default account, which claims that children rely on default generic expectations that must be
overturned by sufficient particular marking. This raises the separate question: Why are generics
default? Proponents of this position suggest that children are equipped early on to learn about
kinds and to generate inductive inferences necessary for building up knowledge about categories
(e.g., Gelman, 2004; Leslie & Gelman, 2012; Mannheim et al., 2011). These generic concepts
are seen as cognitively basic, and thus the task falling to the child learner is to acquire markers of
particularity (rather than markers of the generic).
A second possibility is that social and socio-pragmatic factors within the speaker-listener inter-
action promoted children’s generic interpretations. Interestingly, one of these factors may have
been an apparent pedagogical expectation on the part of children. Although earlier we noted
that the current findings contradict the idea that ostensive gesture typically conveys kind-relevant
information—a claim implied by the natural pedagogy position—the natural pedagogy position
may account, in a rather different way, for children’s weak socio-pragmatic sensitivity to points.
Namely, children may have expected that the experimenter would be more likely to teach them
generic facts rather than discuss idiosyncrasies of specific individuals, and it is this expecta-
tion that may have swamped sensitivity to pointing’s role as marking particularity. The adult
experimenter was using many other cues that have been discussed as instantiating pedagogical
expectations (e.g., Csibra & Gergely, 2009), including child-directed speech and gaze alterna-
tions between the referents and the children. Additionally, children may have seen the adult
experimenter as a knowledgeable other with information about the world that was likely to be
category-relevant. In line with this possibility, prior research suggests that 4-year-olds are more
likely to expect teachers to discuss generic instances of animal kinds in comparison to veterinar-
ians (who presumably would be more interested in diagnosing the maladies of specific animals)
(Cimpian & Markman, 2008). Related research also suggests that slightly older children, as well
as adults, are more likely to refer to generic kinds when placed in the position of a teacher ver-
sus a learner (Gelman, Ware, Manczak, & Graham, 2011). If children interpreted the adult as
a teacher-like figure, they may have expected kind-relevant pedagogy to be provided. Future
research can address these possibilities, for example by instituting a non-pedagogical version of
the experimenter-child interaction, in which the experimenter does not appear to directly address
the child or engage in other pedagogical cues, or by featuring a speaker who would likely not
know as much about the relevant categories, such as another child.
Future research can also extend the current findings by addressing how children respond to
other in-the-moment social communicative cues to contrast. The cue that we examined, pointing,
was only one of many such cues that a parent might use to convey a contrastive (and therefore
particular-marking) referential intent. Other cues could be examined as well; for instance, prosody
may be one additional important source of information regarding whether reference is particular
or generic. Take, for instance, a situation in which each they is heavily stressed and drawn out in
“They are afraid of raccoons, and they like to eat bread.” Such intonation in English is likely to
convey a clearer contrastive (and therefore particular, non-generic) intent. Additionally, it would
also be helpful to examine other, less intentionally communicative contextual cues available in
the environment that could potentially promote a contrastive interpretation; for instance, if a
series of animals were depicted on separate pages rather than all together, this might allow a
viewer to infer that information predicated of one of the animals did not hold for any succeeding
instances.
Also of interest is whether children’s generic expectations operate in other domains. For
instance, in situations of referential ambiguity, children might assume that an adult’s reference to
social groups divided along gender or racial lines was generic; for example, if an adult observed
a group of girls playing with dolls and said, “They like to play with dolls,” children might inter-
pret this as referring to girls in general. If children were likely to interpret this type of reference
as generic, this could have profound and unintended consequences for how children understand
the social world, particularly if adults mean to refer to specific people rather than groups and
thus are inadvertently “teaching” their children about social kinds. Overall, it will be important
in the future to examine what verbal and non-verbal factors contribute to children’s expectations
about generic vs. particular reference and how these expectations change across the course of
development.
In summary, children’s tendency in the current studies to interpret ambiguous language as
referring to a generic kind is an intriguing behavior that invites more investigation into what
promotes such expectations. Disentangling the cognitive, social, and pedagogical factors that
contributed to such a bias creates an inviting direction for future research. As well, it will be
valuable in the future to determine how these factors are interpreted across development. It is
possible that generics remain default in adults’ cognitive representations, but that adults are also
more readily able than children to respond to pragmatic and socio-pragmatic cues to inhibit a
default generic interpretation. Ultimately, uncovering answers to these and related questions will
aid in understanding how children develop knowledge about categories and individuals.
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Pointing As A Socio-Pragmatic Cue To Particular vs. Generic Reference

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Language Learning and Development

ISSN: 1547-5441 (Print) 1547-3341 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hlld20

Pointing As a Socio-Pragmatic Cue to Particular vs.

Meredith Meyer & Dare A. Baldwin

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2013.753802

Published online: 26 Feb 2013.

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Pointing As a Socio-Pragmatic Cue to Particular

GESTURAL SOCIO-PRAGMATIC CUES TO GENERIC VERSUS

Single Exemplar Double Exemplar

Cat (eating) Parrots (preening or not)

Sample Utterances Type

Is that bird cleaning his wing? Particular

FIGURE 1 Proportion of generic and particular utterances in single- and

different (M double-exemplar = .23, SD = .22; M single-exemplar = .16, SD = .29; t(21) =

Rabbit sleep on their sides

FIGURE 2 Schematic of experimenter’s points and utterances in Studies

FIGURE 3 Mean percent generic responses by condition and age group

FIGURE 4 Mean percent generic responses by condition and age group

nouns in Southern Peruvian Quechua. Language Learning and Development, 7, 1–23.

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