Pointing to others: How the target gender influences pointing performance

Laurent Cleret de Langavant (1) , Charlotte Jacquemot (2, 3) , Virginie Cruveiller , Emmanuel Dupoux (4) , Anne-Catherine Bachoud-Lévi (1)

1 CHU Trousseau [APHP]
2 DEC - Département d'Etudes Cognitives - ENS Paris
3 IMRB - Institut Mondor de Recherche Biomédicale
4 LSCP - Laboratoire de sciences cognitives et psycholinguistique

Pointing is a communicative gesture that allows individuals to share information about surrounding objects with other humans. Patients with heterotopagnosia are specifically impaired in pointing to other humans' body parts but not in pointing to themselves or to objects. Here, we describe a female patient with heterotopagnosia who was more accurate in pointing to men's body parts than to women's body parts. We replicated this gender effect in healthy participants with faster reaction times for pointing to men's body parts than to women's body parts. We discuss the role of gender stereotypes in explaining why it is more difficult to point to women than to men.

Mots clés: Gender; heterotopagnosia; pointing; social interaction; stereotype

Domaines: Psychologie

Laurent Cleret de Langavant, Charlotte Jacquemot, Virginie Cruveiller, Emmanuel Dupoux, Anne-Catherine Bachoud-Lévi. Pointing to others: How the target gender influences pointing performance. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 2016, 33 (5-6), pp.343-351. ⟨10.1080/02643294.2016.1209175⟩. ⟨hal-02326570⟩