Learning Novel Skills From Iconic Gestures: A Developmental and Evolutionary Perspective

Cumulative cultural learning has been argued to rely on high-fidelity copying of other individuals’ actions. Iconic gestures of actions have no physical effect on objects in the world but merely represent actions that would have an effect. Learning from iconic gestures thus requires paying close attention to the teacher’s precise bodily movements—a prerequisite for high-fidelity copying. In three studies, we investigated whether 2- and...