Talk:Pointing

Globalizing

User:Macrakis: For whatever it's worth, cultural variations was a thing I was aware this was missing, and intended to get to it, but I'm still pretty much chest deep in the basic literature on pointing, so I haven't quite made my way there yet. Further help is greatly appreciated, especially from someone with better language skills than me. GMG^talk 02:27, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Great, glad to hear it. I was concerned that the article as written was focusing on US-specific behaviors, and treating them as universal or normaūtive. For one thing, it wasn't clear whether the article was intended to be about the concept of pointing in general, or the specific gesture of extending the arm and the index finger. I'm no expert in this area, but would be happy to contribute as I can. --Macrakis (talk) 03:36, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

As for adding sources in Talk, I'd already added several sources in the body of the article before your note. In fact, among others, I added a reference to one of the chapters of the Kita book (which you already referenced in the article): David Wilkins, "Why Pointing With the Index Finger is Not a Universal (in Sociocultural and Semiotic Terms)". --Macrakis (talk) 03:39, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm stuck on mobile for the next couple of days, but I should have some time on sunday to look through things. As to the focus of the article, I really don't have one. I'm just trying to follow the sources, which have already taken me in a couple of directions I didn't intend to go. So far, probably most seem to define it as index finger pointing, which may just mean we need more and better sources. GMG^talk 18:00, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Macrakis: I'd be interested to see if you thought the current version was better. I think I'm winding down. I still need to do a full copyedit, but the time spent reading is really starting to just be time spent, and not really adding much to the article. GMG^talk 22:57, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Would appreciate some more qualified eyes on Pointing

Discussion moved from original location at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Psychology. GMG^talk 14:58, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Basically, I'm keenly aware that I'm doing an exceptionally poor job in the prevalence section. The article is new overall and I'll probably continue to work on it for several more days, but this part in particular is bugging me something fierce.

There are sources on one side that say "pointing is a uniquely human phenomenon" full stop. And there are sources on the other that say "btw, pointing has been observed in these couple of dozen species." And... when I try to get into the specifics that bridge that gap, I just find my eyes crossed, with no obvious way to summarize things on a ~secondary school level. I... normally find that being a non-expert and dumbly summarizing sources is an advantage, but... rereading things this morning, I'm starting to think I need a second or third opinion. GMG^talk 12:21, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Excellent question and kudos to you for asking for help. It is a fascinating topic about which I was not previously familiar. Please don't get down on yourself. The difficulty you experience attempting to synthesize and summarize the empirical literature on this topic reflect its complexity. How do different species respond to declarative vs. imperative pointing? Do infants/dogs/dolphins/apes comprehend pointing because of an innate ability or due to a learning process, e.g., classical or operant conditioning or social (observational) learning? Or does this ability represent a combination of innate understanding and learning? Based on my quick review of some of the literature, it seems that these are fundamental questions in developmental and comparative psychology that do not yield easy answers.

In terms of that section, here are some suggestions: 1) I did not see a citation for Leavens and Hopkins; 2) I like your endnote re: "spontaneous" although I am not clear on the distinction, e.g., is spontaneous equivalent with innate? Ultimately, it might help readers' comprehension to integrate such an explanation into the body of the article; 3) I would begin the second paragraph with a phrase that signals "the other side of the argument" or "another perspective", e.g., "On the other hand..." or "In contrast...".

Good work on a tough subject!   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 18:31, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

For the post part,  Done as far as the suggestions go. As to the larger question, it seems that on front line academic research, the answer tends to to say yes, that non-human animals do point, while in books the answer is fairly well no, and in many cases simply dismissed out of hand. GMG^talk 20:05, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I come at this sideways, you might say, from a deaf education/American Sign Language viewpoint, where the concept of classifiers and use of pointing is fascinating, e.g., pointing starts out referentially in deaf children, as with hearing children, but then bifurcates where one branch becomes a grammatical indicator that can act as a demonstrative pronoun, and the other remains what it was, and always is for hearing speakers. Fascinating and complex subject, took a whole course in ASL classifiers in college (and just now added the redirect for that-there link, which is begging to be expanded into a whole article, but that's another story). I haven't mentioned any of this stuff at the article, it deserves maybe a sentence or two and a {{main}} link to a full article, so later, when there's an "ASL classifiers" article worthy of the name, we can do that. For the time being, I restricted myself to just a few comments on deaf vs. hearing acquisition of language, and how toddlers and young children use pointing in each domain.

Good choice of topic, looking forward to how it develops. One thing I'd like to see added is the iconicity (or lack thereof) of pointing. That is, I seem to remember that it's not automatic that a point-hand gesture is interpreted as a pointer in every culture; I seem to remember at least one where they just stare at your arm if you do that, but I could be wrong. A discussion of whether it is universally interpreted the way we do, or whether it is culturally bound, would be very welcome. Mathglot (talk) 02:42, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

It looks like there is some debate as to whether pointing is a human universal, in addition to whether it is uniquely human. And if it is a human universal, whether it is biologically determined, the result of some other biological determinism (such as a predisposition to communicative interaction) combined with a particular cultural expression, or if it is partially or mostly a reinforcement based on the reaction of adults. AND if it is any of these, whether the core "thing" is an index finger point or just "some gesture" that creates an imaginary "arrow" to an object. This in turn seems to have implications for pointing in non-humans, because if we define pointing as index finger pointing, have we just defined it in a way that is morphologically and superficially uniquely human, even if it isn't uniquely human in it's intentionality and communicative properties (like many other things, I would intuitively expect to see proto-pointing in non-human primates, but the existence of that doesn't seem to be agreed upon entirely).

Basically I started off intending to write a fairly straight forward article on developmental psychology (my academic background is in social work, which is heavily developmental psychology), and I'm getting smacked in the face with the sociology, philosophy, and evolutionary biology of it, that I didn't really even consider may have existed before.

But by all means, feel free to draw on your personal background to add and don't feel too concerned about the due weight, at least not at the moment. I don't consider the article "written" yet, so it's hard to judge relative weight when you don't yet have a full article to judge from. GMG^talk 17:32, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Understood; glad to help out. My first "burst" is probably done for now, but there's more that could be added there. I'm also not averse to helping out in other areas of the article. I'll keep it on my Watchlist, and maybe pop in and out from time to time. Keep it going, excited to see how it develops. Mathglot (talk) 04:56, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Ages in the Nakayama source

Yo Mathglot. Im looking at that Nakayama source and they appear to be using semicolons instead of periods for their ages? (Yes that's a question mark on purpose.) Is that something special to denote YEAR;MONTH or is that just a weird form of decimal? I've honestly never seen it before. I've been poking around online for ten minutes now looking for an explanation and all I can find is a dang Reddit thread. GMG^talk 19:06, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that, too. Just a weird form of decimal was my presumption, as I'm used to European-style, comma-as-decimal, but you're right to question it. I'll look around a bit, but if you didn't find anything, I probably won't either. Mathglot (talk) 20:34, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

That's frustrating. It's pretty uncommon to see ages with infants/toddlers given as a a base ten decimal, which doesn't jive at all with a base twelve month. GMG^talk 20:37, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Well... I'm close to giving up trying to find an explanation. I suppose I may put a footnote in explaining things, since acting like it's clearly one or the other is kindof just an assumption on our parts. GMG^talk 21:02, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

They are using it to mean age in years and months. This isn't a common notation, but by googling around I managed to find a few other examples. Looie496 (talk) 21:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Link? Not that I'm questioning your honesty, because I'm not. It's just that I wasn't able to find really anything at all. GMG^talk 22:15, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

It requires google-foo. For example, https://books.google.com/books?id=VTQ6D7IIekIC&pg=PA245. Looie496 (talk) 22:35, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Late reply but yes .... semicolon means what follows is in months, decimal point means it is an ordinary fraction. Ive seen it before in books on child development, specifically speech acquisition. Personally I've always thought that an apostrophe would make more sense, like we do with feet and inches ... but maybe that would be somehow mistaken for the child's height. —Soap— 01:42, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Dogs

We mention that non-human animals are not known to use pointing and then at the end of the article we provide a link to pointing dogs as if they were a mere afterthought. "No animals other than humans are known to use pointing behavior to single out objects, I mean except pointing dogs of course which do it so well that they actually point out animals that *humans* cant see, but you know what I mean, right?" —Soap— 20:49, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Pointing in German culture

I've taken out the sentence on pointing with the small finger in Germany - although I don't seem to be the first person who tried to take this non-sensical bit out. I have no idea where this idea even comes from. For one thing, the German name of the index finger translates to 'pointing finger'. In addition, the German wiki page on the index finger has several examples of pointing gestures with that very finger, so that should be enough proof that the claim that Germans point with their little fingers is made up. --Suhusa2 (talk) 11:23, 28 July 2022 (UTC)