The origin of pointing: Evidence for the touch hypothesis.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: O'Madagain C
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6620103 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
The origin of pointing: Evidence for the touch hypothesis.
O'Madagain Cathal C Kachel Gregor G Strickland Brent B
Science advances 20190710 7
Pointing gestures play a foundational role in human language, but up to now, we have not known where these gestures come from. Here, we investigated the hypothesis that pointing originates in touch. We found, first, that when pointing at a target, children and adults oriented their fingers not as though trying to create an "arrow" that picks out the target but instead as though they were aiming to touch it; second, that when pointing at a target at an angle, participants rotated their wrists to ...[more]
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