Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and aims: Do infants know enough about the properties of hands to have a social interaction with them in the absence of the rest of the body? If the answer is yes, it would imply that infants have some understanding that hands are not only intentional but also that they are connected to a person who is capable of communicating and interacting. Past studies have shown that infants understand hands to be intentional agents (e.g., Woodward, 1998). However, an explicit connection between hands, body and mind has not been established. Here we use the strong social tendency of 24-month-olds to continuously and simultaneously copy a model’s actions (Nielsen & Dissanayake, 2004) to investigate whether infants understand that a person’s hands can alone afford a communicative function.

Methods: Twenty-four 2-year-old infants were randomly assigned to one of two test conditions. All infants saw a series of simple actions on novel objects. While the actions were being demonstrated the infants could act on duplicates of the objects being used by the model. For infants in a “whole body” condition, the model was seated at a table directly opposite them. Infants in a “hands only” condition saw the same objects and actions performed by the same model: However, the infants could not see her directly but rather saw only her hands protruding through a black curtain. Infants were classified as imitating synchronically if they took the duplicate object and, while the model was demonstrating the action, copied her continuously for at least 3 seconds.

Key result: An independent samples t-test revealed that infants in the “whole body” condition” (M = 31.67 seconds, SD = 19.99) engaged in significantly more synchronic imitation than infants in the “hand only” condition (M = 14.42 seconds, SD = 15.17), t (22) = 2.54, p = .019.

Conclusions: The infants tested here synchronically imitated actions performed by disembodied hands (M = 14.42s). This finding suggests that 24-month-olds may perceive hands as having a communicative function, even when the rest of the body is not visible. Nevertheless, infants who could see the whole body of an adult model showed significantly more synchronic imitation (M = 31.67s). From this, we can conclude that whereas infants have some understanding of the communicative nature of hands, hands alone do not convey the same social information as a whole body. These findings are discussed with reference to an ongoing program investigating infants’ understanding of hands.