One-Year-Olds Warn Others About Negative Action Outcomes

Abstract

Warning others is a paradigm case of communicative helping and prospective action understanding. The current study addressed the ontogeny of warning in infants' gestural communication. We found that 12- and 18-month-olds (n = 84) spontaneously warned an adult by pointing out to her an aversive object hidden in her way (problem condition). In control conditions, the object was either positive (no-problem condition) or the adult had witnessed its placing (problem-known condition), which resulted in significantly less pointing. Results show that infants intervene spontaneously to help others avoid a problem before it has occurred. These acts of warning entail an understanding of negatively defined goals (to avoid an outcome) and incorrect representations of reality. Findings support theories of altruism and social–pragmatic competencies in infancy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Margret van Beuningen, Marloes van der Goot, and Mireille Hassemer for their assistance with data collection, and Ludy Cilissen and Nick Wood for their technical support.

Notes

¹The pattern remained significant when comparing the problem-before (9/12) and the problem-after (8/12) conditions separately to the problem-known and the no-problem conditions (respectively, Fisher's Exact, p = .02, p = .02, p = .05, p = .05).