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March 21, 2012

How to Make Kids Listen | Pointing Your Finger Makes You Seem Credible

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."

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