Discussion
The purpose of Experiment 2 was to test the alternative explanation that a higher affordance of the
give-me gesture rather than its relatedness to social action may account for shorter latencies of goaldirected
gaze shifts compared with gaze behavior observed in the Inverted Hand Shape condition. The
findings of Experiment 2 demonstrate that affordances alone do not explain the difference in latencies
of goal-directed eye movements observed in Experiment 1. The 12-month-olds did not exhibit significantly
earlier gaze shifts toward a non-social goal object with a high affordance compared with a goal
object with a low affordance. Interestingly, the comparison between Experiments 1 and 2 revealed
that latencies of infants’ goal-directed gaze shifts were significantly shorter when the receiving hand
formed a give-me gesture relative to when the upright object shape with a comparable high affordance
was presented as the goal of the observed action. At the same time, there was no significant difference
in infants’ gaze behavior between observing the inverted hand shape and observing the
inverted object shape that also conveys similar affordances (Low Affordance condition). Together,
the findings are also consistent with the hypothesis that properties of a social goal, in this case a
receiving hand, influence how fast infants shift their gaze during observation of other people’s actions
and not its affordance.
However, another possible interpretation of Experiment 1 is that give-me gestures attract more of
infants’ attention than the inverted hand shape and that this increase of attention facilitates goaldirected
gaze shifts through priming (Daum & Gredebäck, 2011). According to this suggestion, shorter
latencies of goal-directed gaze shifts in the condition showing the give-me gesture might be attributed
only to attentional mechanisms and not to the social goal of an action. This issue was addressed in
Experiment 3.