Why would a single gesture like pointing warrant an entire edited volume? Even an academic might ask that question, but, in fact, so many other topics that researchers study involve learning more and more about less and less. Moreover, a scientific consensus can change radically in the space of a relatively short amount of time.
Here is why we think pointing deserves a whole volume. First, pointing is not a “single” gesture. Pointing is done with various configurations of the hands and other parts of the body (e.g., head, nose, lips). Second, whether, how, when, and where people point varies across cultures. By focusing on pointing, we expand our understanding about the different ways people communicate. Third, pointing and the capacity to understand pointing, is not uniquely human. Around forty species for which there is published literature point or understand pointing by humans (Krause et al., Reference Krause, Udell, Leavens and Skopos2018; McCreary et al. Reference McCreary, Jones and Kuhlmeier2023). There is an evolutionary basis for pointing, and comparative studies with nonhuman animals are valuable tools for understanding it. Fourth, pointing can be a means for understanding other aspects of cognition. During development, pointing can tell us what a developing organism is beginning to understand about the world and, in some communities (for humans and apes), pointing can facilitate other skills, such as, language development. Also, the signs of manual languages include pointing, which are glossed to indicate their meanings as specific vocabulary items.
Finally, this is not the first edited volume to focus on pointing. That honor goes to Sotaro Kita (Reference Kita2003a) and those who contributed chapters to that book. Kita’s book was pathbreaking in its multicultural orientation. Years before it became generally recognized that the discipline of psychology was highly skewed towards the study of Western peoples (Henrich et al., Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010), the contributors to that book made it clear that pointing did not look the same all over the world (e.g., Haviland, Reference Haviland and Kita2003; Wilkins, Reference Wilkins and Kita2003) and Goodwin (Reference Goodwin and Kita2003), Clark (Reference Clark and Kita2003), and Kita (Reference Kita and Kita2003b) noted the importance of situational factors on how people establish joint attention to a common focus. Moreover, Kendon and Versante (Reference Kendon, Versante and Kita2003), in their microanalytic study of pointing by Neapolitans, emphasized the range of distinct meanings that could be conveyed through different shapes of the pointing hand, thereby capitalizing on within-cultural variation in pointing postures to illuminate the range of meanings that pointing can signify. Thus, Kita’s book is pioneering in its global perspective but also marks a discipline-wide historical transition from the study of one particular, culturally situated manner of pointing (pointing with the arm and index finger extended) to a broader focus on nonverbal deixis, absorbing anatomical considerations under a more general functionalist perspective on how people display nonverbal reference. With respect to pointing by animals, one chapter in Kita’s volume (Povinelli et al., Reference Povinelli, Bering, Giambrone and Kita2003) essentially denied the capacity for pointing to nonhumans. Much has happened in this area of study in the past two decades, as the contributors to the present volume will show. Our book is organized around two central themes: (a) the development of pointing in cross-cultural perspective, which builds on Kita’s inclusive approach to deictic communication, and (b) an in-depth consideration of pointing by animals.
We sought to capture pointing in all of its complexity. Accomplishing this requires that we examine how pointing is used across human cultural groups, the use and function of pointing as it develops in young people, and the comparative and evolutionary bases for the capacity to point and follow the pointing of others. This book is divided into two main parts. Part I, “Culture and Development,” is dedicated to exploring the interrelated facets of culture and development on pointing. Pointing develops in variable sociocultural contexts, and that is reflected in the groundbreaking chapters written by a fantastic group of authors. Chapters in the second part of the book, “Evolution,” explore pointing in nonhuman species. The past forty plus years of research in comparative psychology tells us that, clearly, the production and comprehension of pointing occur in many different nonhuman species. Chapters in the “Evolution” part explore the evidence for this, and the authors have done a marvelous job of explaining how and why pointing is a capacity for human and nonhuman species.
I.1 Cultural and Developmental Perspectives
Starting in infancy, gestures can be used to connect and communicate with others. Pointing is among these gestures, and certainly is an important one. A book of this scope requires that we address how pointing can be defined. Cooperrider took on this task and has done so in a highly engaging and productive manner. Cooperrider asks us to consider that pointing can be broadly expressed in terms of the physical form of the gesture, and this is directly relevant to every chapter in the book. Furthermore, despite having varied ways of being expressed, pointing has “direction establishing” and “signal establishing” properties; it tells another to move or orient toward something. It is a way of conveying one’s intent to reorient someone’s attention. This definition does not require us to adopt a given theoretical perspective. Rather, it is a starting place for looking at pointing from differing perspectives.
One of the major aims of this book is to broaden our understanding of pointing beyond those drawn from samples from Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) (Henrich et al., Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010) cultures. Bard and colleagues (Reference Bard, Keller and Ross2022) took similar aim at research examining joint attention, conducting a decolonized study of human and chimpanzee infants. Their approach was to sample across several sociocultural and rearing contexts, and they discovered commonalties in joint attention within and between both humans and chimpanzees, as well as forms of joint attention that were culturally contextualized. For the present volume, we specifically invited authors who could similarly decolonize research on pointing. Halavani, Duggirala, Özker, Wang, and MacGillivray reveal how culturally based views on child development influence pointing, and also how commonalities occur among cultures despite varied social contexts.
Views on child development, and how to approach studying children, have evolved from a decontextualized search for universals to what Cochet describes as situated and differentiated. This evolution compels us to dispense with the assumption that convenience samples are sufficient and justified for making sweeping claims about human behavior and development. Cochet reveals the extent to which some long-held assumptions about pointing become questionable when a culturally situated approach is adopted. Indeed, researchers can journey to study other people, and sacrifice convenience to actually test the situated and contextualized nature of pointing and its development.
Chaudhary, Chawla, and Pillai provide a rich account of how early socialization plays a vital role in how people communicate with speech and gesture, including pointing. To what extent are infants and children invited to participate in conversations with adults in their social group? The answer of course depends on which group of young people we are talking about. Chaudhary, Chawla, and Pillai describe how pointing is integrated into conversations among people from India, where the context encompasses dense social settings and complex kinship ties.
In contrast, pointing occurs in people inhabiting more sparse social settings where communication about place is particularly important, as is the case among speakers of the Gija language in Australia. As de Dear describes, establishing place can be integral to conversations among speakers of Gija. Conversations often begin by establishing the place where the focal event in the story occurred. Local knowledge location is valued and is a regular topic of conversation among speakers of Gija. Pointing is much less likely to occur when reference is made to a major, well-established location. The chapter by de Dear is a wonderful example of how pointing is situated within an environmental context that requires frequent and accurate pointing, and pointing is used flexibly with different hand configurations and use of the head, chin, and lips to indicate direction.
Pointing is important in the context of wayfinding practices. Takada describes how pointing is integrated into wayfinding during travel among Indigenous people who live in the Kalahari Desert. Both Takada and de Dear provide detailed analyses of how the people they study embed pointing when they converse about space within their respective ecological contexts. They show how communication about events, and where the events take place, can involve both shared knowledge while conversants are stationary (de Dear), and also in situations where conversants are on the move (e.g., wayfinding) where some individuals may not be aware of the features of the land they are navigating.
Adult views on the roles that children play in the family and society have a profound impact on many aspects of development (Lancy, Reference Lancy2015), and pointing and related gestures are among many behaviors that are culturally influenced. Vallotton, Albert, Diop, and Kim describe the role of pointing in situations where caregiving is child-led; that is, in situations where parents are highly responsive to what children are communicating about. The authors draw contrasts with literature on the development of pointing in children from cultures that are described as interdependent, and in this context child-rearing emphasizes proximal (close body) contact rather than distal (far, physically separated) contact (see also Keller et al., Reference Keller, Borke, Staufenbiel, Yovsi, Abels, Papaligoura, Jensen, Lohaus, Chaudhary, Lo and Su2009). In the latter, as Vallotton and colleagues review, pointing emerges early, is extensive, and is found in social contexts like object naming, play, sharing, separating/reuniting, and others.
Generally speaking, the majority of research on pointing has been from a developmental perspective, and investigators have focused on such topics as changes in the topography of the gesture (e.g., handshapes), its communicative function and intent and how these change with time and experience, and how pointing is related to other domains such as language development and social cognition (e.g., theory of mind) (Franco & Butterworth, Reference Franco and Butterworth1996; Tomasello et al., Reference Tomasello, Carpenter and Liszkowski2007). Liszkowski and Kaletsch integrate these approaches to studying pointing in infants and children living in WEIRD settings, and adopt a reverse engineering approach to understanding the role of pointing in language acquisition and suggest that pointing develops from prelinguistic referential communication, to referential pointing, and then to symbolic language. Regarding the developmental origins of pointing, it is not even a given that pointing emerges as a communicative act. O’Madagain discusses data indicating that pointing has its origins in noncommunicative acts, namely touching objects of interest by both infant and caregiver. Pointing is thought to emerge from this context into one involving joint attention and communication.
Pointing encompasses other elements of communication, including shared attention, and gaze following and directing. Deák and Tang describe how infants (six to seven months in WEIRD samples) learn to follow gaze trajectories and pointing by adults, and how this contributes to their understanding of objects, actions, and words. This has important implications for how pointing is viewed from a functional perspective. Indeed, shared attention and sensitivity to eye gaze are requisite capacities for pointing as a means to communicate. In addition, and interestingly, children find real faces to be particularly salient and important during bouts of shared attention. Itakura explores the field of Socially Signaling Robotics and describes how infants living in Japan preferentially respond to the attentional focus of a human in comparison to a robot that has eye, face, and head-like features that are designed to alter its direction of focus. Itakura proposes different directions that this field can take as technological innovations spread through many countries throughout the world.
The versatility of pointing gestures becomes quite evident when considering how they can be incorporated into a fully linguistic realm of communication. Humans who speak, of course, integrate gestures into their communication. But humans who do not speak fully rely on gestures to convey meaning. Thus, pointing becomes incorporated into symbolically coded gestures in signed languages. Gestural utterances become grammaticized, and pointing can be crucial to conveying meaning. Morgenstern and Caët directly compare and contrast how pointing is used in actual conversations by family members who use speech and those who use sign language.
In summary, the first part of this book explores the rich ways that human beings use and respond to pointing. We can now pivot and consider pointing in a different way. Despite sustained claims that pointing is uniquely human, and that it evolved to suit uniquely human adaptive needs, for over forty years comparative psychologists have demonstrated the capacity to produce and comprehend pointing in numerous nonhuman species (Krause et al., Reference Krause, Udell, Leavens and Skopos2018). Thus, the editors of this volume frame evolutionary perspectives on pointing from a comparative standpoint.
I.2 Evolutionary Perspectives
The field of comparative psychology has hosted an ongoing debate as to whether some nonhuman species can point, and whether a multitude of species understand pointing by others. Only a few decades ago, the debate was largely focused on whether great apes (primarily chimpanzees) could extend their index finger and make a pointing gesture, instead of begging with an open palm, for example (see Krause & Fouts, Reference Krause and Fouts1997; Leavens et al., Reference Leavens, Hopkins and Bard1996; Povinelli & Davis, Reference Povinelli and Davis1994). Today, arguing over the primacy of extending an index finger seems rather quaint, if not misguided (to us, anyway).
Working in separate laboratories (Krause at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute, Central Washington University [henceforth, CHCI] and Leavens and Bard at what was then known as the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University [henceforth, Yerkes]), we became involved in the study of pointing by apes during the mid-1990s, when pointing was widely considered to be an evolutionarily given, species-specific gesture in humans, which functioned to permit the acquisition of language (specifically, a lexicon; see, e.g., Baron-Cohen, Reference Baron-Cohen, Corballis and Lea1999; Butterworth, Reference Butterworth, Moore and Dunham1995; Corballis, Reference Corballis1991, among many others). Butterworth, for example, asserted that “pointing is a species-specific form of reference that is basic to human nonverbal communication” (Reference Butterworth, Moore and Dunham1995, p. 335). Corballis claimed that “pointing with the outstretched arm and index finger at objects in visual space seems to be unique to humans” (Reference Corballis1991, p. 157).
Although researchers had previously used chimpanzees’ pointing as choice responses in their work (e.g., Woodruff & Premack, Reference Woodruff and Premack1979), the first systematic study of pointing, per se, in great apes was a landmark 1994 study, published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, by Call and Tomasello (Reference Call and Tomasello1994). They reported pointing by two orangutans, Chantek and Puti, housed at the Yerkes field station, near Atlanta, Georgia. They found that Chantek, a male, sign-language-trained orangutan (see Miles, Reference Miles, Parker and Gibson1990), both produced and comprehended pointing gestures, whereas Puti, who was a female, institutionalized orangutan with no special training, was relatively poor at using and understanding pointing gestures, even after some specific training. They concluded that:
we have documented differences in the production and comprehension of pointing in two orangutans who differed in their interactive histories with human beings. When this result is taken in conjunction with other recent findings of differences among apes with different types of experience with humans, the methodological lesson is clear: It is not wise at this point to make generalizations about the cognitive capacities or incapacities of apes without some explicit accounting of their previous experience, especially with humans.
Shortly after this paper was published, Leavens and colleagues (Reference Leavens, Hopkins and Bard1996) published their finding of pointing production by three institutionalized chimpanzees (Clint, Anna, and Flora) at the Yerkes Main Center, in Atlanta. The next year, Krause and Fouts (Reference Krause and Fouts1997) reported pointing by two sign-language-trained chimpanzees at CHCI (Moja and Tatu). From these three studies of pointing apes, it was becoming apparent that whether great apes pointed with their index fingers or with all fingers extended towards the target of interest seemed to depend on how closely they had interacted with people, especially early in their lives. The language-trained apes (Chantek, Moja, and Tatu) pointed overwhelmingly with their index fingers, but the institutionalized apes (Puti, Clint, Anna, and Flora) preferred to point with their whole hands, although some pointing with the index fingers was observed in this group, too. Thus, the more interaction these apes had with people, the more they pointed with their index fingers, and this general pattern has been borne out by subsequent research (reviewed by Leavens & Hopkins, Reference Leavens and Hopkins1999; Leavens et al., Reference Leavens, Bard and Hopkins2010). There is now a huge literature on pointing and point following in dozens of nonhuman species, and, as we see in cross-cultural studies of humans, there is more than one way to point.
As we gained more knowledge of earlier studies of great apes, it became apparent to us that scientists had repeatedly reported pointing by great apes since the late nineteenth Century (Table I.1). The apes described as pointing or comprehending pointing gestures ranged from wild, free-ranging animals (e.g., Garner, Reference Garner1896; Nissen, Reference Nissen1931) to highly trained performing animals (e.g., Witmer, Reference Witmer1909). Most of the apes listed in Table I.1 were infants or juveniles, reflecting the difficulty scientists had in keeping the animals alive in captivity before the mid twentieth century (see Garner’s [Reference Garner1896] heartrending description of the decline and death of Moses, or Kearton’s [Reference Kearton1925] similar description of Toto’s demise).
| Date | Name | Species | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1896 | Unnamed | Chimpanzees (generally) | “extending one arm towards the person or thing desired” (p. 74) | Garner (Reference Garner1896) |
| 1909 | Peter | Chimpanzee | Pointed to his trainers when asked, “Where is Mr. [or Mrs.] McArdle?” | Witmer (Reference Witmer1909) |
| 1916 | Unnamed | Orangutan | Pointed to author when asked, “Where is Papa?” | Furness (Reference Furness1916) |
| 1916 | Unnamed | Chimpanzee | Pointed to her own eye when asked to identify an image of the letter “I” | Furness (Reference Furness1916) |
| 1916 [1925] | Unnamed | Chimpanzee | Author “pointed out” a splinter in his own finger, which the ape subsequently removed | Köhler (Reference Köhler1925) |
| 1916 [1925] | Chicaa | Chimpanzee | Used a stick to indicate choice of two photographs presented at a short distance | Köhler (Reference Köhler1925) |
| 1925 | Totob | Chimpanzee | Pointed to books on a shelf, apparently to identify correct one to retrieve for the author | Kearton (Reference Kearton1925) |
| 1931 | Unnamed | Chimpanzee | Seemed to point to the south, away from human observers, but the author was not sure it was a communicative signal | Nissen (Reference Nissen1931) |
| 1933 | Gua | Chimpanzee | Pointed to objects or images of objects when asked | Kellogg & Kellogg (Reference Kellogg and Kellogg1933) |
| 1935 [2002] | Joni | Chimpanzee | Understood pointing, pointed to request things | Ladygina-Kohts (Reference Ladygina-Kohts2002) |
| 1941 | Toto | Gorilla | Pointed frequently to many different objects, usually to request them | Hoyt (Reference Hoyt1941) |
| 1942 | Jack | Chimpanzee | Pointed to a lever in apparent request to open a gate | Finch (Reference Finch1942) |
| 1943 | Moos | Chimpanzee | Pointed to an erupting tooth in his own mouth | Yerkes (Reference Yerkes1943) |
| 1954 | Viki | Chimpanzee | Pointed to nearby objects, but only rarely to more distant objects | Hayes (Reference Hayes and Hayes1954) |
| 1954 | Christine | Chimpanzee | On command, pointed to pictures of apes and cats in picture-books | Hess (Reference Hess1954) |
Notes: aKöhler also reported the apparent lack of comprehension of a human’s point by Sultan, a male chimpanzee (p. 126). bIt should be noted that Kearton was in the grip of a malarial fever at the time of this observation.
I.2.1 Production of Pointing in Nonhumans
Prior to the mid-1990s, most systematically documented cases of great ape pointing could be found within reports from comparative language studies. Many of the American Sign Language signs that chimpanzees used involved pointing with the whole hand or index finger (Gardner et al., Reference Gardner, Gardner, Nichols, Gardner, Gardner and Van Cantfort1989). Jensvold provides what is now the most detailed report of pointing in signing chimpanzees, and this chapter is rich with examples of the varied contexts in which this has occurred. In parallel with signing chimpanzees, pointing is also common among chimpanzees and bonobos taught to use artificial language systems. Lyn reviews capacities for pointing in apes taught to use these language systems, and also ape capacities to comprehend pointing gestures made by humans.
Immersion in a language training environment is not even necessary for pointing to emerge in great apes, though rearing history does impact the frequency of pointing, predominant handshapes used, and the contexts in which pointing occurs (Leavens et al., Reference Leavens, Bard and Hopkins2010). Hopkins reviews thirty years of research examining pointing gestures in laboratory-reared, non-language-trained chimpanzees. The chimpanzees in Hopkins and colleagues’ studies show the hallmark features of pointing as an intentional, communicative act. They don’t point unless humans are present and attending to them, when humans are present, they use attention-getting sounds before pointing to desired objects, and they point by extending either a whole hand or an index finger. Furthermore, Hopkins and his colleagues have broken new ground examining the neural correlates of gestural communication in chimpanzees and have found distinctive neural substrates correlated with individual differences in chimpanzee manual gestures and orofacial movements. Recall that these are findings with laboratory-reared chimpanzees without language training, so these neural correlates are not molded by experience in a language-training environment. Does this mean that the requisite behavioral and neural capacities for pointing are present in all great apes, including those in the wild?
Pointing has been observed, though it probably occurs rarely, in wild chimpanzees (Hobaiter et al., Reference Hobaiter, Leavens and Byrne2014) and bonobos (Veá & Sabater-Pi, Reference Veá and Sabater-Pi1998). Despite its rarity in wild apes, the fact that pointing has been observed, and that it occurs so readily in captivity, indicates a readiness for pointing to emerge among a repertoire of referential gestures (Leavens et al., Reference Leavens, Hopkins and Bard2005). One take home message from Eleuteri, Safryghin, and Hobaiter’s chapter is how unsurprising it is that pointing emerges in captive chimpanzees. The authors review numerous studies demonstrating that wild chimpanzees use many different referential gestures in their daily interactions with each other (see also Hobaiter & Byrne, Reference Hobaiter and Byrne2017; Hobaiter et al., Reference Hobaiter, Graham and Byrne2022). Furthermore, as with humans, there is population-level variability in referential gestures used among groups of chimpanzees, which may be related to social and ecological circumstances.
Captivity is a context, and takes a variety of forms, such as zoos and research laboratories, where interactions with humans can vary in frequency but are generally limited in comparison to contexts in which humans rear the subjects from an early age, such as in the case of chimpanzees cross-fostered by humans. Nonhuman primates in particular learn that, although confinement constrains their capacity for agency when it comes to getting food or other desired resources, they can communicate their wants to human caregivers. This common context for captive nonhuman primates has led to biased interpretations of pointing capacities in animals, which are largely viewed as imperative (limited to requesting) and not declarative (showing or sharing information). Declarative pointing has been regarded as uniquely human by authors who have made a theoretical commitment to the notion that sharing information requires socio-cognitive sophistication that they claim is beyond reach for nonhuman primates (e.g., theory of mind) (e.g., Tomasello et al., Reference Tomasello, Carpenter and Liszkowski2007). Regarding this issue, readers are advised to consult Jensvold’s chapter carefully. Halina and Liebal approach the imperative/declarative distinction with a nuanced and focused look at how gestures affect the attention of others, namely captive chimpanzees communicating with humans. The authors remind us that the canonical paper by Bates and colleagues (Reference Bates, Camaioni and Volterra1975) offered a broad perspective on how pointing is used, and its functions, beginning with its origins in infancy. Halina and Liebal’s contrast with the “narrow view” that draws a firm boundary between imperative and declarative pointing is one that should be considered by both researchers in comparative psychology and human developmental psychology.
Another approach to the comparative study of pointing in nonhumans is to examine their capacity to understand the gesture, i.e., point comprehension, an approach that has significantly broadened the taxonomic diversity of species studied. These studies and some theoretical issues that continue to generate much interest and empirical research are the topics in the next section
I.2.2 Point Comprehension in Nonhuman Species
Responses by nonhumans to pointing and other social cues such as gaze direction have relied heavily on the object choice task (OCT). The general procedure for the OCT involves placing a valued item, normally food, in one of two opaque containers while the test subject is not present. The subject is then brought into the room and an experimenter standing in close proximity to the containers produces one of several different types of social cue (pointing, gaze direction, or both) for the subject. Once the subject has viewed the social cue, they are allowed to approach the containers. Selection of the baited container is considered a successful trial (i.e. the subject used the social cue to communicate the location of the food). This procedure usually requires some initial training so that the subject understands the basic rules of the game. The OCT is the most widely used procedure for testing for point comprehension abilities in nonhuman species. It offers a standardized method for conducting intra- and inter-specific comparisons of nonhuman responses to human social cues. However, this does not mean that it has been consistently applied across comparative studies. H. Clark provides a detailed description of the procedures of the OCT, and a thoughtful review and critique of the literature comparing point comprehension in canids and great apes. H. Clark points out that this research area is rife with inconsistencies in terms of the ages, rearing histories, and experimental procedures used in canid–primate comparisons (see also Clark et al., Reference Clark, Elsherif and Leavens2019). There is ongoing theoretical debate about why there is intra- and interspecific variation in point-following abilities. Clark and Lyn review the literature on the relative contributions of domestication (in canids) and experience (in canids and nonhuman primates), and these chapters confirm the need for the alignment of OCT methodology and controls for early social experience in comparative studies of point comprehension (see also Leavens et al., Reference Leavens, Bard and Hopkins2019).
Questions about domestication and rearing history have extended into new realms with research on livestock. Brucks and Nawroth review research on how domesticated farm animals (in particular cows, horses, pigs, and goats) respond to pointing and other social cues such as gaze. In their review, Brucks and Nawroth reveal many opportunities and challenges in studying these species. On the one hand, researchers can explore interspecific variation pertaining to different sensory capacities, selection pressures, and rearing histories. On the other, as Brucks and Nawroth reveal, in order to make meaningful progress, researchers need to address concerns about standardizing protocols, identifying underlying cognitive mechanisms, and account for oftentimes considerable interindividual variation in responding to human cues within the study species. These issues are not unique to research on domesticated farm animals but rather are shared with comparative research on more commonly studied taxa such as primates and canids.
The OCT is used to study responses to social cues by humans, and comparative studies have emphasized point comprehension while drifting away from studies of pointing production (Krause et al., Reference Krause, Udell, Leavens and Skopos2018). But there are notable exceptions. Meguerditchian describes pointing gestures by captive baboons, arguing that both imperative and declarative types of pointing may occur in this species. This chapter is a nice complement to the comparatively rare literature on pointing in monkeys relative to studies of great apes. Bates, Byrne, and Poole explore both comprehension and production of pointing in elephants. Research by these authors and others have shown interesting species differences in comprehension, and compel us to think more broadly about what constitutes a pointing gesture. This is a familiar issue to those working in the comparative psychology realm because different bodily designs must be considered. Social and large-brained quadrupeds and marine mammals are good candidates for high-level cognitive capacities, leading comparative psychologists to test for pointing in animals such as elephants and dolphins. Bates, Byrne, and Poole discuss how elephants may use their highly dexterous trunk and snout to point. It bears repeating here that if we define pointing by a single attribute, such as hand configuration, we shut down fascinating inquiry not only for humans, but also for studies of nonhuman pointing.
I.3 Looking Ahead
Several significant changes have taken place since the publication of Kita’s (Reference Kita2003a) volume on pointing. First, researchers in the social sciences have become increasingly conscious of the over-representation of wealthy, educated Western people in our understanding of what constitutes a “typical psychological development” (e.g., Bard et al., Reference Bard, Keller and Ross2022, Reference Bard, Keller and Leavens2025); this book continues Kita’s global focus. Second, there has been sea change in our understanding of pointing by animals in the last twenty-five years: whereas formerly pointing and its comprehension were viewed as uniquely human, it is now widely recognized that animals do point, and with this book we seized the opportunity to invite some of the premier researchers in this area to summarize and contextualize their work on nonhumans. Third, one theoretical consequence of the former belief in human exceptionalism was the idea that the study of pointing could reveal something about human species-specific cognitive adaptations (e.g., Povinelli et al., Reference Povinelli, Bering, Giambrone and Kita2003; Tomasello et al., Reference Tomasello, Carpenter and Liszkowski2007); in contrast, in today’s research environment, it is no longer heretical to suggest that aspects of human communicative development, including the development of pointing, may rely on learning mechanisms that are widespread among vertebrates. As with most edited volumes of this sort, readers can expect to be brought up to speed on major developments in the field. This of course benefits not only those who are reading this perhaps because the title and subject matter piqued their interest, but also those who work on their own specialized subject matter within this field. We hope this volume serves as both a waypoint, marking discoveries of the past few decades, as well as a guide for future directions in research on the developmental, cultural, and evolutionary bases of pointing.
