• Get kids to believe you by pointing at something

    By Natalie Wolchover
    Life's Little Mysteries

    Pointing makes kids believe you. And it may convey an air of authority to adults, too.

    That's the finding of a pair of psychologists at the University of Virginia. In a new study probing how young children make inferences about what other people know, co-authors Carolyn Palmquist and Vikram Jaswalfound that adults can convince a 4-year-old that they know something simply by pointing while delivering the message. This act even overrides all other evidence that the pointer is clueless.

    "Children were willing to attribute knowledge to a person solely based on the gesture they used to convey the information," Palmquist said in a news release. "They have built up such a strong belief in the knowledge that comes along with pointing that it trumps everything else, including what they see with their eyes."

    The researchers had 48 preschoolers watch several video clips showing two women, four overturned cups and a ball. In all the clips, one woman, the "hider," announced that she was going to hide a ball under one of the cups. The other woman covered her eyes and turned to the wall, and the hider placed a barrier in front of the cups to block the children's view of which cup she was hiding the ball under. The barrier was then removed and the other woman turned around. 

    Next, the video clips diverged: In the control setup, after the ball was hidden, both women sat with their hands in their laps. Another clip had an alternate ending, in which each woman grasped a different cup; and in the final variation, each woman pointed at a different cup. In each case, the children were asked which woman knew were the ball was.

    When both women grasped cups or kept their hands in their laps, the children gave the correct answer — attributing knowledge of the ball's location to the hider — about 75 percent of the time. (The authors concluded that grasping was either not a meaningful hand gesture to the children, or it was associated with searching for the ball rather than knowing its whereabouts.) However, when both women pointed at a cup, the children chose the hider, the woman who actually knew the ball's location, only about half the time. Statistically, as a group, the 4-year-olds considered the women to be equally likely to know the ball's location.

    They thought the woman who didn't see where the ball was hidden must have had some other way of knowing its whereabouts — because otherwise, why did she point? "From an early age, when children see pointing, they understand it as an important gesture used in contexts of teaching and learning," Palmquist explained. "Generally people point because they have good reason to do it." [Simple Gesturing Helps Students Learn]

    Though adults probably wouldn't commit the surprising error made by the 4-year-olds in the study, the researchers do believe pointing continues to inordinately impress us throughout our lives. "We continue to use pointing, even as adults, as a sign of something important or interesting in the environment," Palmquist told Life's Little Mysteries. "So while we might not be as easily misled by pointing as these children were, as adults, we still might have implicit assumptions about why people would take the time to point something out and what kind of knowledge generally goes along with someone's pointing gesture."

    Additionally, the finding likely pertains to all the world's cultures, not just Westerners who point things out with our index fingers. In other cultures, elbows, chins or other fingers are used instead. "Bearing [this] in mind, I would think that index finger pointing would only have an effect in those cultures where it is paired with knowledge and used in teaching and learning situations (like we use it). However, equivalent gestures in other cultures might have the same impact if they are used in a similar way," she said.

    Palmquist plans to continue investigating the power of pointing in future studies.

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  • Women's hormone cream can screw up your kids, pets

    Kim Campbell Thornton writes: The hug of a middle-aged woman might affect nearby kids and pets in alarming ways -- and it has nothing to do with menopause mood swings.

    On Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning that children who are inadvertently exposed to an estrogen spray to ease hot flashes can develop an upsetting reaction – premature puberty. The FDA has received 8 reports involving children ages 3 to 5 whose reactions have included nipple swelling and breast development in girls and breast enlargement in boys. Pets exposed to the hormone spray have turned up with nipple enlargement and swelling of the vulva in females.

    A recent report by the Veterinary Information Network also warns that some pets are inadvertently ingesting topical hormone sprays, creams or gels by licking the area or being petted after the product is applied and then grooming themselves. Side effects have included undersized penises in males and fur loss.

    Estrogen and testosterone aren’t the only hormones that cause problems. A psoriasis cream called Dovonex, a derivative of vitamin D — itself a hormone — can cause unusual thirst, appetite loss, and severe vomiting or diarrhea when pets lick it off the skin or chew on the tube, says Michael Stone, an internal medicine specialist at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in Grafton, Mass.

    To avoid the problem, women shouldn’t let children or pets come in direct contact with the area where the medication was applied, or they should wear clothing that covers it. If contact does occur, wash the child’s skin with soap and water right away, the FDA says. We assume the same goes for pets.

    Do you use these kinds of hormone sprays, creams or gels? Will you stop, or just take extra precautions? Leave your comments here.

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