Sociocultural settings influence the emergence of prelinguistic deictic gestures

Not too shy to point! Exploring the relationship between shyness and pointing in the second year

Infants' use of pointing gestures to direct and share attention develops during the first 2 years of life. Shyness, defined as an approach-avoidance motivational conflict during social interactions, may influence infants' use of pointing. Recent research distinguished between positive (gaze and/or head aversions while smiling) and non-positive (gaze and/or head aversions without smiling) shyness, which are related to different social and cognitive skills. We investigated whether positive and non-positive shyness in 12-month-old (n = 38; 15 girls) and 15-month-old (n = 45; 15 girls) infants were associated with their production of pointing gestures. Infants' expressions of shyness were observed during a social-exposure task in which the infant entered the laboratory room in their parent's arms and was welcomed by an unfamiliar person who provided attention and compliments. Infants' pointing was measured with a pointing task involving three stimuli: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. Positive shyness was positively associated with overall pointing at 15 months, especially in combination with high levels of non-positive shyness. In addition, infants who displayed more non-positive shyness pointed more frequently to direct the attention of the social partner to an unpleasant (vs. neutral) stimulus at both ages. Results indicate that shyness influences the early use of pointing to emotionally charged stimuli.

A Chinese version of the communication complexity scale (CCS): psychometric evaluation in children with minimal verbal skills

PURPOSE

This study aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the translated Chinese version of the Communication Complexity Scale (C-CCS) in a Chinese sample of preschool-aged children with minimal verbal skills.

METHODS

A total of 120 children with autism spectrum disorders or children with developmental delays aged 2 to 5 years with minimal verbal skills (i.e., produced less than 20 functional words) were recruited to complete the C-CCS. First, we tested the protocol with 20 children and shortened it based on their results. Second, the interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity for 100 participants were examined. C-CCS scores were compared with scores from the Chinese Communicative Development Inventories (CCDI) for concurrent validity.

RESULTS

Ten C-CCS interactive scripts were administered to 100 participants. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) between independent observers were high. The ICCs for overall optimal scores, optimal BR scores and optimal JA scores were 0.978, 0.971 and 0.977 respectively. Agreement for scores within scripted opportunities and communication level were high-Kappa coefficients 0.869 and 1.000 respectively. The test-retest reliability was high (r = 0.911). A moderate correlation was found between the C-CCS and the CCDI (r = 0.401).

CONCLUSIONS

The results indicate that C-CCS could be used as a measurement tool in research and clinical practice to describe communication levels in children with minimal verbal skills in China.

Infants' use of the index finger for social and non-social purposes during the first two years of life: A cross-cultural study

The emergence of the pointing gesture is a major developmental milestone in human infancy. Pointing fosters preverbal communication and is key for language and theory of mind development. Little is known about its ontogenetic origins and whether its pathway is similar across different cultures. The goal of this study was to examine the theoretical proposal that social pointing is preceded by a non-social use of the index finger and later becomes a social-communicative gesture. Moreover, the study investigated to which extent the emergence of social pointing differs cross-culturally. We assessed non-social index-finger use and social pointing in 647 infants aged 3- to 24 months from 4 different countries (China, Germany, Japan, and Türkiye). Non-social index-finger use and social pointing increased with infants' age, such that social pointing became more dominant than non-social index-finger use with age. Whereas social pointing was reported across countries, its reported frequency differed between cultures with significantly greater social pointing frequency in infants from Türkiye, China, and Germany compared to Japanese infants. Our study supports theoretical proposals of the dominance of non-social index-finger use during early infancy with social pointing becoming more prominent as infants get older. These findings contribute to our understanding of infants' use of their index finger for social and non-social purposes during the first two years of life.

Early gesture use predicts children's language development in South Korea: New evidence supporting the cross-cultural importance of pointing

Research in the U.S. and other Western countries shows that children's early gesture use, which starts prior to verbal communication, is an important predictor of children's later language development. Despite increasing efforts to study gesture use in diverse contexts, most of our knowledge on the role of gesture is largely based on populations of Western countries. In this study, we add to the growing body of international research by examining gesture use by 31 mothers and their 14-month-old infants (12 girls) in South Korea and investigate the gestures used during interaction, and whether early gesture use at 14 months predicts Korean children's later language skills at 36 months. The results showed that in addition to using gestures observed in other cultural contexts, Korean mother-child dyads used culturally specific gesture (i.e., bowing), showing an early sign of socialization that starts with preverbal children. In addition, Korean infants' index-finger pointing, but not showing and giving, predicted their later receptive and expressive vocabulary skills at 36 months, providing additional support for the importance of pointing in early language development.

Task-related differences in the gesture production of young autistic children

BACKGROUND

In typically developing (TD) children, gesture emerges around 9 months of age, allowing children to communicate prior to speech. Due to the important role gesture plays in the early communication of autistic and TD children, various tasks have been used to assess gesture ability. However, few data exist on whether and how tasks differentially elicit gesture, particularly for samples of racially and ethnically diverse autistic children.

AIMS

In this study, we explored if task (a naturalistic parent-child interaction [NPCI]; structured assessment of child communication) differentially elicited rate or type of gesture production for young autistic children.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

This secondary analysis included baseline data from 80 racially and ethnically diverse autistic children aged 18-59 months who participated in one of two larger studies. Video recordings of NPCIs and an assessment of child communication with standardised administration procedures were collected at baseline. Child gesture rate (number of gestures produced per 10 min) and type were extracted from these recordings and analysed.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

The structured assessment elicited more gestures than the NPCI. In terms of gesture type, points, gives, and reaches accounted for 76% of child gestures. Points (which are developmentally more advanced than reaches and gives) were produced at the highest rates within book exploration. Distal points (which are more developmentally advanced than proximal or contact points) were produced at the highest rates when children were tempted to request.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Our findings indicate elicitation tasks differentially elicit type and rate of gesture for young autistic children. To assess the gesture production of young autistic children, a structured task designed to elicit child requests will probe the developmental sophistication of the child's gesture repertoire, eliciting both the most gestures and the most developmentally advanced gestures.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

What is already known on the subject Because of the importance of gesture in early communication for autistic and typically developing children, various tasks have been used to assess it. However, little is known about whether tasks differentially elicit type or rate of gesture for young autistic children from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. What this paper adds to existing knowledge Elicitation tasks differentially elicit type and rate of gesture for young autistic children in the early stages of gesture. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? We recommend a structured task designed to elicit child requests to assess the developmental sophistication of a child's gesture repertoire.

Parentese in infancy predicts 5-year language complexity and conversational turns

Parental input is considered a key predictor of language achievement during the first years of life, yet relatively few studies have assessed its effects on longer-term outcomes. We assess the effects of parental quantity of speech, use of parentese (the acoustically exaggerated, clear, and higher-pitched speech), and turn-taking in infancy, on child language at 5 years. Using a longitudinal dataset of daylong LENA recordings collected with the same group of English-speaking infants (N=44) at 6, 10, 14, 18, 24 months and then again at 5 years, we demonstrate that parents' consistent (defined as stable and high) use of parentese in infancy was a potent predictor of lexical diversity, mean length of utterance, and frequency of conversational turn-taking between children and adults at Kindergarten entry. Together, these findings highlight the potential importance of a high-quality language learning environment in infancy for success at the start of formal schooling.

Patterns of attention-sensitive communication contribute to 7-20-month-olds' emerging pragmatic skills

The present study aimed at investigating the ability of 7- to 20-month-old infants to display attention-sensitive communication using either canonical markers of language acquisition (e.g., pointing gestures, canonical babblings) or other signals based on the physical features actually perceived by the mother in everyday interaction (e.g., body movements, mouth sounds). We studied 30 French mother-infant dyads in naturalistic settings. We assessed the infants' attention-sensitive communication through unimodal and cross-modal adjustment, defined as the capacity of infants to address visually inattentive mothers by avoiding visual communication mismatches and/or favoring communication matches through audible-or-contact signals. Unimodal and cross-modal adjustments were tested for specific signals across spontaneous "conditions" of maternal visual attention (attentive/inattentive) from video footage filmed in the home. Both canonical markers of language development and signals belonging to an extended repertoire of communication were used by infants to adjust to their mother's visual attention. Gaze-coordinated signals were overall not significantly better adjusted to maternal attention than non-gaze-coordinated signals, except for specific silent-visual signals at certain ages. Overall, these results indicate that attention-sensitive communication is relevant to the development of early pragmatic skills and that the intentional use of signals may be more reliably approximated by this capacity than by gaze-coordination with signals.

The breadth and specificity of 18-month-old's infant-initiated interactions in naturalistic home settings

Infants actively initiate social interactions aiming to elicit different types of responses from other people. This study aimed to document a variety of communicative interactions initiated by 18-month-old Turkish infants from diverse SES (N = 43) with their caregivers in their natural home settings. The infant-initiated interactions such as use of deictic gestures (e.g., pointing, holdouts), action demonstrations, vocalizations, and non-specific play actions were coded from video recordings and classified into two categories as need-based and non-need-based. Need-based interactions were further classified as a) biological (e.g., feeding); b) socio-emotional (e.g., cuddling), and non-need-based interactions (i.e., communicative intentions) were coded as a) expressive, b) requestive; c) information/help-seeking; d) information-giving. Infant-initiated non-need-based (88%) interactions were more prevalent compared to need-based interactions (12%). Among the non-need-based interactions, 50% aimed at expressing or sharing attention or emotion, 26% aimed at requesting an object or an action, and 12% aimed at seeking information or help. Infant-initiated information-giving events were rare. We further investigated the effects of familial SES and infant sex, finding no effect of either on the number of infant-initiated interactions. These findings suggest that at 18 months, infants actively communicate with their social partners to fulfil their need-based and non-need-based motivations using a wide range of verbal and nonverbal behaviors, regardless of their sex and socio-economic background. This study thoroughly characterizes a wide and detailed range of infant-initiated spontaneous communicative bids in hard-to-access contexts (infants' daily lives at home) and with a traditionally underrepresented non-WEIRD population.

A new online paradigm to measure spontaneous pointing in infants and caregivers

Index-finger pointing is a milestone in the development of referential communication. Previous research has investigated infants' pointing with a variety of paradigms ranging from parent reports to field observations to experimental settings, suggesting that lab-based semi-natural interactional settings seem especially suited to elicit and measure infant pointing. With the Covid-pandemic the need for a comparable online tool became evident enabling also efficient, low-cost, large-scale, diverse data collection. The current study introduces a remote online paradigm, based on the established live 'decorated-room' paradigm. In Experiment 1, 12-months old infants and their caregivers (N = 24) looked at digitally presented stimuli together while being recorded with their webcam. We coded pointing gestures of infants and caregivers as well as caregivers' responses to infants' pointing. In Experiment 2 (N = 47), we optimized stimuli and investigated influences of stimulus characteristics. We systematically varied the style of depiction, stimulus complexity, motion, and facial stimuli. Main findings were that infants and caregivers pointed spontaneously, with mean behaviors ranging within the benchmarks of previously reported findings of the live decorated-room paradigm. Further, the social setting was preserved as revealed by significant relations between parents' responsive points and infants' pointing frequency. Analyses of stimuli characteristics revealed that infants pointed more to stimuli depicting faces than to other stimuli. The new remote online paradigm proves a useful addition to established paradigms. It offers novel opportunities for simplified assessments, large-scale sampling, and worldwide, diversified data collection.

The Role of Gesture in Language Development for Neurotypical Children and Children With or at Increased Likelihood of Autism

For young children, gesture is found to precede and predict language development. However, we are still building a knowledge base about the specific nature of the relationship between gesture and speech. While much of the research on this topic has been conducted with neurotypical children, there is a growing body of work with children who have or are at increased likelihood of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we summarize the literature on relations between gesture and speech, including the role of child gesture production as well as that of gesture exposure (caregiver gesture). We include literature on both neurotypical children and children with or at likelihood of ASD, highlight the similarities and differences across populations, and offer implications for research as well as early identification and intervention.

Correlates of infant pointing frequency in the first year

This study examines the emergence of concurrent correlates of infant pointing frequency with the aim of contributing to its ontogenetic theories. We measured monthly from 8 to 12 months infants' (N = 56) index-finger pointing frequency along with several candidate correlates: (1) family socioeconomic status (SES), (2) mothers' pointing production, and (3) infants' point following to targets in front of and behind them. Results revealed that (1) infants increased their pointing frequency across age, but high-SES infants had a steeper increase, and a higher pointing frequency than low-SES infants from 10 months onward, (2) maternal pointing frequency was not associated with infant pointing frequency at any age, (3) infants' point following abilities to targets behind their visual fields was positively associated with their pointing frequency at 12 months, after pointing had already emerged around 10 months. Findings suggest that family SES impacts infants' pointing development more generally, not just through maternal pointing. The association between pointing and following points to targets behind, but not in front, suggests that a higher level of referential understanding emerges after, and perhaps through the production of pointing.

Relation of infants' and mothers' pointing to infants' vocabulary measured directly and with parental reports

Infants' and parents' pointing gestures predict infants' concurrent and prospective language development. Most studies have measured vocabulary size using parental reports. However, parents tend to underestimate or overestimate infants' vocabulary necessitating the use of direct measures alongside parent reports. The present study examined whether mothers' index-finger pointing, and infants' whole-hand and index-finger pointing at 14 months associate with infants' receptive and expressive vocabulary based on parental reports and directly measured lexical processing efficiency (LPE) concurrently at 14 months and prospectively at 18 months. We used the decorated room paradigm to measure pointing frequency, the Turkish communicative development inventory I to measure infants' receptive vocabulary, Turkish communicative development inventory II to measure their expressive vocabulary, and the Looking-While-Listening (LWL) task to measure LPE. At 14 months, 34 mother-infant dyads, and at 18 months, 30 dyads were included in the analyses. We found that only infants' index-finger pointing frequency at 14 months predicted their LPE (both reaction time and accuracy) prospectively at 18 months but not concurrently at 14 months. Neither maternal pointing nor infants' pointing predicted their receptive and expressive vocabulary based on indirect measurement. The results extend the evidence on the relation between index-finger pointing and language development to a more direct measure of vocabulary.

Parent coaching from 6 to 18 months improves child language outcomes through 30 months of age

Interventions focused on the home language environment have been shown to improve a number of child language outcomes in the first years of life. However, data on the longer-term effects of the intervention are still somewhat limited. The current study examines child vocabulary and complex speech outcomes (N = 59) during the year following completion of a parent-coaching intervention, which was previously found to increase the quantity of parent-child conversational turns and to improve child language outcomes through 18 months of age. Measures of parental language input, child speech output, and parent-child conversational turn-taking were manually coded from naturalistic home recordings (Language Environment Analysis System, LENA) at regular 4-month intervals when children were 6- to 24-months old. Child language skills were assessed using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) at four time-points following the final intervention session (at 18, 24, 27, and 30 months). Vocabulary size and growth from 18 to 30 months was greater in the intervention group, even after accounting for differences in child language ability during the intervention period. The intervention group also scored higher on measures of speech length and grammatical complexity, and these effects were mediated by 18-month vocabulary. Intervention was associated with increased parent-child conversational turn-taking in home recordings at 14 months, and mediation analysis suggested that 14-month conversational turn-taking accounted for intervention-related differences in subsequent vocabulary. Together, the results suggest enduring, positive effects of parental language intervention and underscore the importance of interactive, conversational language experience during the first 2 years of life. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Parent coaching was provided as part of a home language intervention when children were 6-18 months of age. Naturalistic home language recordings showed increased parent-child conversational turn-taking in the intervention group at 14 months of age. Measures of productive vocabulary and complex speech indicated more advanced expressive language skills in the intervention group through 30 months of age, a full year after the final intervention session. Conversational turn-taking at 14 months predicted subsequent child vocabulary and accounted for differences in vocabulary size across the intervention and control groups.

Talking About the Absent and the Abstract: Referential Communication in Language and Gesture

Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness directly, either because they are absent or because they have no physical form (e.g., people we have not met, concepts like justice). What enables language to transmit such knowledge? We propose that a referential link between words, referents, and mental representations of those referents is key. This link enables us to form, access, and modify mental representations even when the referents themselves are absent ("absent reference"). In this review we consider the developmental and evolutionary origins of absent reference, integrating previously disparate literatures on absent reference in language and gesture in very young humans and gesture in nonhuman primates. We first evaluate when and how infants acquire absent reference during the process of language acquisition. With this as a foundation, we consider the evidence for absent reference in gesture in infants and in nonhuman primates. Finally, having woven these literatures together, we highlight new lines of research that promise to sharpen our understanding of the development of reference and its role in learning about the absent and the abstract.

Gesticulation in individuals with at risk mental states for psychosis

Nonverbal communication (NVC) is a complex behavior that involves different modalities that are impaired in the schizophrenia spectrum, including gesticulation. However, there are few studies that evaluate it in individuals with at-risk mental states (ARMS) for psychosis, mostly in developed countries. Given our prior findings of reduced movement during speech seen in Brazilian individuals with ARMS, we now aim to determine if this can be accounted for by reduced gesticulation behavior. Fifty-six medication-naïve ARMS and 64 healthy controls were filmed during speech tasks. The frequency of specifically coded gestures across four categories (and self-stimulatory behaviors) were compared between groups and tested for correlations with prodromal symptoms of the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes (SIPS) and with the variables previously published. ARMS individuals showed a reduction in one gesture category, but it did not survive Bonferroni's correction. Gesture frequency was negatively correlated with prodromal symptoms and positively correlated with the variables of the amount of movement previously analyzed. The lack of significant differences between ARMS and control contradicts literature findings in other cultural context, in which a reduction is usually seen in at-risk individuals. However, gesture frequency might be a visual proxy of prodromal symptoms, and of other movement abnormalities. Results show the importance of analyzing NVC in ARMS and of considering different cultural and sociodemographic contexts in the search for markers of these states.

Combining observational and experimental approaches to the development of language and communication in rural samples: Opportunities and challenges

Multiple approaches - including observational and experimental - are necessary to articulate powerful theories of learning. Our field's key questions, which rely on these varied methods, are still open. How do children perceive and produce language? What do they encounter in their linguistic input? What does the learner bring to the task of acquisition? Considerable progress has been made for the development of spoken English (especially by North American learners). Yet there is still a great deal to discover about how children in other populations proceed, especially populations in rural settings. To examine language learning in these populations, we need a multi-method approach. However, adapting and integrating methods, particularly experimental ones, to new settings can present immense challenges. In this paper, we discuss the opportunities and challenges facing researchers who aim to use a multimethodological approach in rural samples, and what the field of language acquisition can do to promote such work.

Early communicative gestures in human and chimpanzee 1-year-olds observed across diverse socioecological settings

We investigated the communicative gestures used by chimpanzee and human infants. In contrast to previous studies, we compared the species at the same age (12-14 months) and used multiple groups living in diverse socioecological settings for both species. We recorded gestures produced by infants and those produce by others and directed toward infants. We classified the gestures into the following types: human-usual, chimpanzee-usual, and species-common; and searched for within species and between species differences. We found no significant differences between groups or species in overall rates of infant-produced or infant-received gestures, suggesting that all of these infants produced and received gestures at similar levels. We did find significant differences, however, when we considered the three types of gesture. Chimpanzee infants produced significantly higher rates of chimpanzee-usual gestures, and human infants produced significantly higher rates of human-usual gestures, but there was no significant species difference in the species-common gestures. Reports of species differences in gesturing in young infants, therefore, could be influenced by investigators' choice of gesture type. Interestingly, we found that 1-year-old infants produced the gesture of "hold mutual gaze" and that the chimpanzee infants had a significantly higher rate than the human infants. We did not find strong evidence that the specific types of gestural environment experienced by young infants influenced the types of gestures that infants produce. We suggest that at this point in development (before human infants use lots of speech), nonverbal communicative gestures may be equally important for human and chimpanzee infants.

Conducting Fieldwork with San and Hadza (Post-)Hunter-Gatherer Communities in Africa: Regulatory and Ethical Issues

In this paper, we address some of the challenges and opportunities of conducting international research in psychology. We examine issues that arise from working in contexts that differ substantially from those in which most psychological research is still conducted. We take our experiences with Tanzanian and Namibian (post-)hunter-gatherers as a starting point for discussing regulatory and ethical issues. We have experienced a highly structured and regulated approach to research in Tanzania and a much less regulated situation in Namibia. We compare both and discuss conflicts that arise from differing demands of national regulations (or lack thereof) and funders or home institutions in the Global North. We focus on the special point of establishing informed consent. While the people we have worked with are not only often illiterate, they also have a very different background of experiences, which means that the translation of consent procedures is not sufficient, and other considerations need to come into play. We discuss cultural characteristics of hunter-gatherer groups, particularly norms related to individual autonomy, that convince us that our participants have the ability to consent nevertheless and compare this with the situation in other groups that we have worked with (for example, Indian farmers). However, we also reflect on ethical choices that become relevant in a digitalized world, particularly when working with children. We argue that an understanding of cultural models and norms is necessary to design and conduct meaningful psychological research and enable us to interpret findings correctly. We suggest to include communities that researchers work with into the research process wherever possible, to aim for long-term commitment and to cultivate an ethical stance regarding research, already in students that become involved in research projects.

Curiosity as a metacognitive feeling

Curious information-seeking is known to be a key driver for learning, but characterizing this important psychological phenomenon remains a challenge. In this article, we argue that solving this challenge requires qualifying the relationships between metacognition and curiosity. The idea that curiosity is a metacognitive competence has been resisted: researchers have assumed both that young children and non-human animals can be genuinely curious, and that metacognition requires conceptual and culturally situated resources that are unavailable to young children and non-human animals. Here, we argue that this resistance is unwarranted given accumulating evidence that metacognition can be deployed procedurally, and we defend the view that curiosity is a metacognitive feeling. Our metacognitive view singles out two monitoring steps as a triggering condition for curiosity: evaluating one's own informational needs, and predicting the likelihood that explorations of the proximate environment afford significant information gains. We review empirical evidence and computational models of curiosity, and show that they fit well with this metacognitive account, while on the contrary, they remain difficult to explain by a competing account according to which curiosity is a basic attitude of questioning. Finally, we propose a new way to construe the relationships between curiosity and the human-specific communicative practice of questioning, discuss the issue of how children may learn to express their curiosity through interactions with others, and conclude by briefly exploring the implications of our proposal for educational practices.

Ontogeny of index-finger pointing

Index-finger pointing is foundational to language acquisition. Less is known about its emergence. In lab-based monthly longitudinal assessments from 8-13 months (N = 31) the study measured longitudinal predictors of index-finger pointing: parent pointing and infants' earlier emerging showing, hand-pointing, and point-following. All behaviors increased significantly with age and showed inter-individual stability. At 11 months all behaviors except hand pointing were synchronously interrelated, with no evidence for an earlier synchronous interrelation between behaviors. Caregiver pointing and infants' earlier behaviors longitudinally predicted the age of emergence of index-finger pointing. An additional cross-sectional comparison of parent pointing at 5 and 7 months (N = 44) showed that significantly fewer caregivers of 5- compared to 7-month-olds pointed for their infants. Findings suggest that pointing emerges as an outcome of social co-construction across the first year of life.

The cross-racial/ethnic gesture production of young autistic children and their parents

BACKGROUND & AIMS

Early gesture plays an important role in prelinguistic/emerging linguistic communication and may provide insight into a child's social communication skills before the emergence of spoken language. Social interactionist theories suggest children learn to gesture through daily interactions with their social environment (e.g., their parents). As such, it is important to understand how parents gesture within interactions with their children when studying child gesture. Parents of typically developing (TD) children exhibit cross-racial/ethnic differences in gesture rate. Correlations between parent and child gesture rates arise prior to the first birthday, although TD children at this developmental level do not yet consistently exhibit the same cross-racial/ethnic differences as their parents. While these relationships have been explored in TD children, less is known about the gesture production of young autistic children and their parents. Further, studies of autistic children have historically been conducted with predominantly White, English-speaking participants. As a result, there is little data regarding the gesture production of young autistic children and their parents from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds. In the present study, we examined the gesture rates of racially/ethnically diverse autistic children and their parents. Specifically, we explored (1) cross-racial/ethnic differences in the gesture rate of parents of autistic children, (2) the correlation between parent and child gesture rates, and (3) cross-racial/ethnic differences in the gesture rates of autistic children.

METHODS

Participants were 77 racially/ethnically diverse cognitively and linguistically impaired autistic children (age 18 to 57 months) and a parent who participated in one of two larger intervention studies. Naturalistic parent-child and structured clinician-child interactions were video recorded at baseline. Parent and child gesture rate (number of gestures produced per 10 min) were extracted from these recordings.

RESULTS

(1) Parents exhibited cross-racial/ethnic differences in gesture rate such that Hispanic parents gestured more frequently than Black/African American parents, replicating previous findings in parents of TD children. Further, South Asian parents gestured more than Black/African American parents. (2) The gesture rate of autistic children was not correlated with parent gesture, a finding that differs from TD children of a similar developmental level. (3) Autistic children did not exhibit the same cross-racial/ethnic differences in gesture rate as their parents, a result consistent with findings from TD children.

CONCLUSIONS

Parents of autistic children-like parents of TD children-exhibit cross-racial/ethnic differences in gesture rate. However, parent and child gesture rates were not related in the present study. Thus, while parents of autistic children from different ethnic/racial backgrounds appear to be conveying differences in gestural communication to their children, these differences are not yet evident in child gesture.

IMPLICATIONS

Our findings enhance our understanding of the early gesture production of racially/ethnically diverse autistic children in the prelinguistic/emerging linguistic stage of development, as well as the role of parent gesture. More research is needed with developmentally more advanced autistic children, as these relationships may change with development.

Prelinguistic gesture and developmental abilities: A multi-ethnic comparative study

The present study examined the frequency of gesture use and the relationship between frequency of gesture use and developmental abilities in typically developing 9- to 15-month-old, prelinguistic Hispanic and non-Hispanic White children. Data was collected through parent questionnaires, the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL), and two, 15-min video samples for each participant (semi-structured and structured settings). All video samples were coded for the frequency of the following gestures: total frequency, behavior regulation, social interaction, and joint attention. Results showed that children from both ethnicities used fewer gestures in a semi-structured setting in comparison to a structured setting and non-Hispanic White children produced higher frequencies of behavior regulation gestures and joint attention gestures, but lower frequencies of social interaction gestures. When controlling for ethnicity, gender, and age total frequency of gesture and frequencies of behavior regulation and social interaction were predictive of various developmental abilities. Furthermore, participant gender, age, and ethnicity were significantly related to various developmental abilities explored. These relationships were dependent upon setting. An understanding of the use of gesture and the relationship between gesture use and developmental abilities in prelinguistic children from different ethnic backgrounds has implication for early identification of delays and differences and is important to consider when exploring the connection between gesture and language and whether there are gesture-language, gesture-motor, and/or gesture-cognition integrated systems.

Gesture Development in Chinese-Speaking Preschool Children With Autism and the Roles of Parental Input and Child-Based Factors

PURPOSE

Children with autism are found to have delayed and heterogeneous gesture abilities. It is important to understand the growth of gesture abilities and the underlying factors affecting its growth. Addressing these issues can help to design effective intervention programs.

METHOD

Thirty-five Chinese-speaking preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (M _age = 4.89 years, SD = 0.91; four girls) participated in four play sessions with their parents over 9 months. Their child-based factors including autism severity, intellectual functioning, and expressive language abilities were assessed. The gestures (deictic, iconic, and conventional) of the children and their parents were coded. Growth curve analyses were conducted to examine individual growth trajectories and the roles of child-based factors and parental input in shaping the children's gesture development.

RESULTS

Child-based factors and parental input predicted gesture development differently. Parents' gestures positively predicted their children's gestures of the same type. Autism severity negatively predicted iconic and conventional gestures. Overall growth was found in deictic rather than iconic and conventional gestures. Subgroup variation was also found. Specifically, children with better expressive language ability showed a decrease in deictic gestures. An increase in iconic and conventional gestures was found in children with more severe autism and those with poorer expressive language ability and intellectual functioning, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Different types of gestures may have different growth trajectories and be predicted by different child-based factors. Particular attention should be given to children who never produced iconic gestures, which is more challenging and may not develop over a short period, and hence require direct instruction.

Developmental Paths of Pointing for Various Motives in Infants with and without Language Delay

Pointing is one of the first conventional means of communication and infants have various motives for engaging in it such as imperative, declarative, or informative. Little is known about the developmental paths of producing and understanding these different motives. In our longitudinal study (N = 58) during the second year of life, we experimentally elicited infants' pointing production and comprehension in various settings and under pragmatically valid conditions. We followed two steps in our analyses and assessed the occurrence of canonical index-finger pointing for different motives and the engagement in an ongoing interaction in pursuit of a joint goal revealed by frequency and multimodal utterances. For understanding the developmental paths, we compared two groups: typically developing infants (TD) and infants who have been assessed as having delayed language development (LD). Results showed that the developmental paths differed according to the various motives. When comparing the two groups, for all motives, LD infants produced index-finger pointing 2 months later than TD infants. For the engagement, although the pattern was less consistent across settings, the frequency of pointing was comparable in both groups, but infants with LD used less canonical forms of pointing and made fewer multimodal contributions than TD children.

Gesture development in infancy: Effects of gender but not bilingualism

Gesture is an important communication tool that provides insight into infants' early language and cognitive development and predicts later language skills. While bilingual school-age children have been reported to gesture more than monolinguals, there is a lack of research examining gesture use in infants exposed to more than one language. In this preregistered study, we compared three groups of 14-month-old infants (N = 150) learning French and/or English: bilinguals (hearing a second language at least 25% of the time), exposed (hearing a second language 10%-24% of the time), and monolinguals (hearing one language 90% of the time or more). Parent-reported use of communicative gestures was gathered from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI). Results showed that the three language groups had similarly sized gesture repertoires, suggesting that language exposure did not affect gesture development at this age. However, a gender effect was found, where girls produced more types of gestures than boys. Overall, these results suggest that gender, but not language exposure, contributes to differences in gesture development in infancy.

Joint Attention in Human and Chimpanzee Infants in Varied Socio-Ecological Contexts

Joint attention (JA) is an early manifestation of social cognition, commonly described as interactions in which an infant looks or gestures to an adult female to share attention about an object, within a positive emotional atmosphere. We label this description the JA phenotype. We argue that characterizing JA in this way reflects unexamined assumptions which are, in part, due to past developmental researchers' primary focus on western, middle-class infants and families. We describe a range of cultural variations in caregiving practices, socialization goals, and parenting ethnotheories as an essential initial step in viewing joint attention within inclusive and contextualized perspectives. We begin the process of conducting a decolonized study of JA by considering the core construct of joint attention (i.e., triadic connectedness) and adopting culturally inclusive definitions (labeled joint engagement [JE]). Our JE definitions allow for attention and engagement to be expressed in visual and tactile modalities (e.g., for infants experiencing distal or proximal caregiving), with various social partners (e.g., peers, older siblings, mothers), with a range of shared topics (e.g., representing diverse socialization goals, and socio-ecologies with and without toys), and with a range of emotional tone (e.g., for infants living in cultures valuing calmness and low arousal, and those valuing exuberance). Our definition of JE includes initiations from either partner (to include priorities for adult-led or child-led interactions). Our next foundational step is making an ecological commitment to naturalistic observations (Dahl, 2017, Child Dev Perspect, 11(2), 79-84): We measure JE while infants interact within their own physical and social ecologies. This commitment allows us to describe JE as it occurs in everyday contexts, without constraints imposed by researchers. Next, we sample multiple groups of infants drawn from diverse socio-ecological settings. Moreover, we include diverse samples of chimpanzee infants to compare with diverse samples of human infants, to investigate the extent to which JE is unique to humans, and to document diversity both within and between species. We sampled human infants living in three diverse settings. U.K. infants (n = 8) were from western, middle-class families living near universities in the south of England. Nso infants (n = 12) were from communities of subsistence farmers in Cameroon, Africa. Aka infants (n = 10) were from foraging communities in the tropical rain forests of Central African Republic, Africa. We coded behavioral details of JE from videotaped observations (taken between 2004 and 2010). JE occurred in the majority of coded intervals (Mdn = 68%), supporting a conclusion that JE is normative for human infants. The JA phenotype, in contrast, was infrequent, and significantly more common in the U.K. (Mdn = 10%) than the other groups (Mdn < 3%). We found significant within-species diversity in JE phenotypes (i.e., configurations of predominant forms of JE characteristics). We conclude that triadic connectedness is very common in human infants, but there is significant contextualization of behavioral forms of JE. We also studied chimpanzee infants living in diverse socio-ecologies. The PRI/Zoo chimpanzee infants (n = 7) were from captive, stable groups of mixed ages and sexes, and included 4 infants from the Chester Zoo, U.K. and 3 from the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan. The Gombe chimpanzee infants (n = 12) were living in a dynamically changing, wild community in the Gombe National Park, Tanzania, Africa. Additionally, we include two Home chimpanzee infants who were reared from birth by a female scientist, in the combined U.S., middle-class contexts of home and university cognition laboratory. JE was coded from videotaped observations (taken between 1993 and 2006). JE occurred during the majority of coded intervals (Mdn = 64%), consistent with the position that JE is normative for chimpanzee infants. The JA phenotype, in contrast, was rare, but more commonly observed in the two Home chimpanzee infants (in 8% and 2% of intervals) than in other chimpanzee groups (Mdns = 0%). We found within-species diversity in the configurations comprising the JE phenotypes. We conclude that triadic connectedness is very common in chimpanzee infants, but behavioral forms of joint engagement are contextualized. We compared JE across species, and found no species-uniqueness in behavioral forms, JE characteristics, or JE phenotypes. Both human and chimpanzee infants develop contextualized social cognition. Within-species diversity is embraced when triadic connectedness is described with culturally inclusive definitions. In contrast, restricting definitions to the JA phenotype privileges a behavioral form most valued in western, middle-class socio-ecologies, irrespective of whether the interactions involve human or chimpanzee infants. Our study presents a model for how to decolonize an important topic in developmental psychology. Decolonization is accomplished by defining the phenomenon inclusively, embracing diversity in sampling, challenging claims of human-uniqueness, and having an ecological commitment to observe infant social cognition as it occurs within everyday socio-ecological contexts. It is essential that evolutionary and developmental theories of social cognition are re-built on more inclusive and decolonized empirical foundations.

In Bilinguals' Hands: Identification of Bilingual, Preverbal Infants at Risk for Language Delay

Studies with monolingual infants show that the gestural behavior of 1-2-year-olds is a strong predictor for later language competencies and, more specifically, that the absence of index-finger pointing at 12 months seems to be a valid indicator for risk of language delay (LD). In this study a lack of index-finger pointing at 12 months was utilized as diagnostic criterion to identity infants with a high risk for LD at 24 months in a sample of 42 infants growing up bilingually. Results confirm earlier findings from monolinguals showing that 12-month-olds who point with the extended index finger have an advanced language status at 24 months and are less likely language delayed than infants who only point with the whole hand and do not produce index-finger points at 12 months.

Six-month-olds' ability to use linguistic cues when interpreting others' pointing actions

The present research investigated whether six-month-olds who rarely produce pointing actions can detect the object-directedness and communicative function of others' pointing actions when linguistic information is provided. In Experiment 1, infants were randomly assigned to either a novel-word or emotional-vocalization condition. They were first familiarized with an event in which an actor uttered either a novel label (novel-word condition) or exclamatory expression (emotional-vocalization condition) and then pointed to one of two objects. Next, the positions of the objects were switched. During test trials, each infant watched the new-referent event where the actor pointed to the object to which the actor had not pointed before or the old-referent event where the actor pointed to the old object in its new location. Infants in the novel-word condition looked reliably longer at the new-referent event than at the old-referent event, suggesting that they encoded the object-directedness of the actor's point. In contrast, infants in the emotional-vocalization condition showed roughly equal looking times to the two events. To further examine infants' understanding of the communicative aspect of an actor's point using a different communicative context, Experiment 2 used an identical procedure to the novel-word condition in Experiment 1, except there was only one object present during the familiarization trials. When the familiarization trials did not include a contrasting object, we found that the communicative intention of the actor's point could be ambiguous. The infants showed roughly equal looking times during the two test events. The current research suggests that six-month-olds understand the object-directedness and communicative intention of others' pointing when presented with a label, but not when presented with an emotional non-speech vocalization.

Communicative Functions in Children Raised in Three Different Social Contexts in Colombia: The Key Issue of Joint Attention

Children’s sociocultural experiences vary around the world. Colombia is a South American country where the differences between socioeconomic statuses (SES) are huge. In this study, through the ECSP-E Scale, translated to Spanish and validated for linguistic and cultural equivalence, the development of three communicative functions was evaluated through an interactive sociopragmatic approach. The participants comprised 36 24-month-old children, raised in three different social contexts in Colombia, with the goal of comparing them across groups of SES. The lowest SES group sample subjects were representative of extreme poverty and members of an ethnic group, the Wayuú. Results for the communicative functions, namely social interaction (SI), joint attention (JA), and behavior regulation (BR), showed that the only function with no significant differences across SES was joint attention. This supports the hypothesis that the development of this function may be universal, in light of the fact that the Wayuú not only differed from other subjects in terms of their socioeconomic status but also in their culture. Higher SES was related to better social interaction, while Low SES was associated with better behavior regulation than their High SES peers. Consequently, results are discussed considering socioeconomic and cultural differences in the development of communication and social interactions, leading us to reexamine the paradigms, theories, and practices that are used when observing children raised in very poor environments.

A parent gesture intervention as a means to increase parent declarative pointing and child vocabulary

This study examined whether a brief parent gesture training resulted in a change in the communicative intent of pointing gestures used by parents of infants from age 10-12 months and whether specific types of points (declarative vs. imperative) were more or less likely to predict later child language skill at 18 months. Compared to parents who were randomized to the control group, parents in the intervention group produced significantly more declarative pointing gestures as a result of the intervention. Moreover, parents' use of declarative points at 12 months was predictive of later child vocabulary comprehension at 18 months. These findings suggest that a short-term parent training can have important effects on the communicative intentions conveyed through gesture which predict vocabulary development.

Is Conceptual Diversity an Advantage for Scientific Inquiry? A Case Study on the Concept of 'Gesture' in Comparative Psychology

Growing scientific fields often involve multidisciplinary investigations in which the same concepts may have different meanings. Here, we examine the case of 'gesture' in comparative research to depict how conceptual diversity hidden by the label 'gesture' can lead to consistently divergent interpretations in humans and nonhuman primates. We show that definitions of 'gesture' drastically differ regarding the forms of a gesture and the cognitive processes inferred from it, and that these differences emerge from implicit assumptions which have pervasive consequences on the interpretations claimed by researchers. We then demonstrate that implicit assumptions about scientific concepts can be made explicit using a finite set of operational criteria. We argue that developing theoretical definitions systematically associated with operational conceptual boundaries would allow to tackle both the challenges of maintaining high internal coherence within studies and of improving comparability and replicability of scientific results. We thus offer an easy-to-implement conceptual tool that should help ground valid comparisons between studies and serve scientific inquiry.

The Referential Problem Space revisited: An ecological hypothesis of the evolutionary and developmental origins of pointing

Pointing by great apes poses a significant challenge to contemporary theories about the evolutionary and developmental foundations of cognitive development, because pointing has long been viewed by theoreticians as an evolved, human-unique developmental stepping-stone to linguistic reference. Although reports of pointing by great apes have existed in the scientific literature for over a century, only in recent decades has it become clear that ape pointing is definitely an intentionally communicative signal, by the same criteria we adjudge human pointing to be intentionally communicative. Theoretical responses to this changed empirical landscape have generally taken the approach of asserting, without any direct evidence (indeed, in the absence of any possibility of direct evidence), that pointing by humans is psychologically distinct from and more cognitively complex than the pointing of apes. It is commonplace in the contemporary literature to appeal to imaginary, species-unique causal factors to account for human pointing, rendering a large body of contemporary theoretical work untestable with scientific methods: scientific arguments require the public availability of core theoretical entities. In this paper, I will analyze the circumstances of pointing by apes and humans and develop an alternative theoretical model of pointing that does not rely upon non-physical constructs. According to the view espoused, here, pointing develops as a solution to a particular kind of developmental problem, characterized by (a) a developing capacity for tool use, (b) barriers to direct action, and (c) a history of caregiver responsiveness. Pointing by both apes and humans is explicable without invoking imaginary, mental causes. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development Psychology > Comparative Psychology.

A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Early Prelinguistic Gesture Development and Its Relationship to Language Development

Many Western industrialized nations have high levels of ethnic diversity but to date there are very few studies which investigate prelinguistic and early language development in infants from ethnic minority backgrounds. This study tracked the development of infant communicative gestures from 10 to 12 months (n = 59) in three culturally distinct groups in the United Kingdom and measured their relationship, along with maternal utterance frequency and responsiveness, to vocabulary development at 12 and 18 months. No significant differences were found in infant gesture development and maternal responsiveness across the groups, but relationships were identified between gesture, maternal responsiveness, and vocabulary development.

Culture and early social-cognitive development

From a developmental systems perspective, this chapter focuses on the question whether culture matters for children's early social-cognitive development. Based on a review of the current cross-cultural literature, we evaluate the current state of research on cross-cultural similarities and differences in major developmental milestones of early social cognition, namely (i) the development of self-awareness and an understanding of self and others as intentional agents, (ii) advanced forms of social learning and (iii) prosocial cognition and behavior. Overall, the current cross-cultural research suggests universality without uniformity: the common suite of social-cognitive skills emerges reliably and, at the same time, there are culture-specific accentuations of social-cognitive development across domains that mostly are in line with cultural values, beliefs and practices. By following different agendas when providing and structuring physical and social settings for their children, caregivers coherently organize infants' nascent intuitions, sentiments, and inclinations into increasingly coherent patterns of attention, appraisal, experience and behavior that are in line with cultural ideals and beliefs. By doing so, culturally informed social interaction sets the stage for culture-specific modulations of social cognition already in the first years of life.

The Pervasive Role of Pragmatics in Early Language

Language is a fundamentally social endeavor. Pragmatics is the study of how speakers and listeners use social reasoning to go beyond the literal meanings of words to interpret language in context. In this article, we take a pragmatic perspective on language development and argue for developmental continuity between early nonverbal communication, language learning, and linguistic pragmatics. We link phenomena from these different literatures by relating them to a computational framework (the rational speech act framework), which conceptualizes communication as fundamentally inferential and grounded in social cognition. The model specifies how different information sources (linguistic utterances, social cues, common ground) are combined when making pragmatic inferences. We present evidence in favor of this inferential view and review how pragmatic reasoning supports children's learning, comprehension, and use of language.

What are the benefits of having a village? Effects of allomaternal care on communicative skills in early infancy

This study investigates whether exposure to allomaternal care (AMC-care for infants from individuals other than the mother) improves rates of communicative behaviors during late infancy by providing more opportunities to practice communicating with varied caregivers. Data were collected from 102 typically-developing infants aged 13-18 months and their mothers. AMC variables were collected using a current care questionnaire, structured 14-day diary, and longitudinal interview. Communicative behaviors were assessed through post hoc microcoding of in-lab administrations of the Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS), as well as additional microcoding of the Bayley III Screening Cognitive Subtest. Demographic covariates were also included. For each communicative behavior, backward model selection was used to determine the best fitting linear regression model. Results suggested that rates of turn-taking decreased with Household AMC (p < 0.008), but increased with two or more siblings present at home (p < 0.01). Conversely, rates of spontaneous giving increased with Household AMC (p < 0.003) regardless of the presence of siblings. Notably, exposure to more AMC was neither helpful nor harmful for many of the tested communicative behaviors, although the number of siblings present was significantly related to rates of following commands, as well as pointing and reaching. Ultimately, this study suggests that household level experiences with AMC, rather than formalized care, impact the development of some communicative behaviors during late infancy.

Does intention matter? Relations between parent pointing, infant pointing, and developing language ability

Infants' pointing is associated with concurrent and later language development. The communicative intention behind the point-i.e., imperative versus declarative-can affect both the nature and strength of these associations, and is therefore a critical factor to consider. Parents' pointing is associated with both infant pointing and infant language; however, less work has examined the intent behind parents' points. We explore relations between parents' and infants' pointing at the level of communicative intention, and examine how pointing relates to concurrent and longitudinal infant language skills. In a sample of 52 mother-infant dyads, we measured mother and infant pointing at infant age 12-months, and infant expressive and receptive language at 12-, 18-, and 24-months. We found that mothers produced points with a variety of intentions, however we did not find relations between mother and infant pointing within the different communicative intentions. Replicating previous research, infant declarative pointing was related both concurrently and longitudinally to their language ability. Mothers' declarative pointing was related to their infants' concurrent language, while their imperative pointing was not. Further, there was an interaction between parent and infant declarative pointing, such that the positive relation between parents' declarative pointing and their infants' concurrent receptive language was present only for those infants who were also producing declarative points themselves. Findings suggest that parents' declarative pointing may support both their infants' early word learning and, perhaps, provides a model for their infant to begin using points as well. This study constitutes an important initial exploration of these relations.

A gestural repertoire of 1- to 2-year-old human children: in search of the ape gestures

When we compare human gestures to those of other apes, it looks at first like there is nothing much to compare at all. In adult humans, gestures are thought to be a window into the thought processes accompanying language, and sign languages are equal to spoken language with all of its features. Some research firmly emphasises the differences between human gestures and those of other apes; however, the question about whether there are any commonalities is rarely investigated, and has mostly been confined to pointing gestures. The gestural repertoires of nonhuman ape species have been carefully studied and described with regard to their form and function-but similar approaches are much rarer in the study of human gestures. This paper applies the methodology commonly used in the study of nonhuman ape gestures to the gestural communication of human children in their second year of life. We recorded (n = 13) children's gestures in a natural setting with peers and caregivers in Germany and Uganda. Children employed 52 distinct gestures, 46 (89%) of which are present in the chimpanzee repertoire. Like chimpanzees, they used them both singly, and in sequences, and employed individual gestures flexibly towards different goals.

A parent intervention with a growth mindset approach improves children's early gesture and vocabulary development

Socioeconomic disparities in children's early vocabulary skills can be traced back to disparities in gesture use at age one and are due, in part, to the quantity and quality of communication children are exposed to by parents. Further, parents' mindsets about intelligence contribute to their interactions with their children. We implemented a parent gesture intervention with a growth mindset component with 47 parents of 10-month-olds to determine whether this approach would increase parents' use of the pointing gesture, infants' use of pointing, and child vocabulary growth. The intervention had an effect on parent gesture such that by child age 12-months, parents who received the intervention increased in their pointing more than parents in the control condition. Importantly, the intervention also had a significant effect on child gesture use with parents. There was no main effect of the intervention on child vocabulary. Further, the effect of the intervention on pointing was stronger for parents who endorsed fixed mindsets at baseline, and had an added benefit of increased vocabulary growth from 10-18 months for children of those parents who endorsed fixed mindsets. Incorporating growth mindset approaches into parenting interventions is encouraged.

Two sources of bias affecting the evaluation of autistic communication

We support Jaswal & Akhtar's interrogation of social motivational accounts of autism and discuss two sources of bias that contribute to how others construe autistic people's communications: (1) an experience-based bias that limits our ability to discern the speaker's action as communicative and (2) a prejudice against the credibility of certain speakers that limits a listener's willingness to believe their testimony.

The Preference for Pointing With the Hand Is Not Universal

Pointing is a cornerstone of human communication, but does it take the same form in all cultures? Manual pointing with the index finger appears to be used universally, and it is often assumed to be universally preferred over other forms. Non-manual pointing with the head and face has also been widely attested, but it is usually considered of marginal significance, both empirically and theoretically. Here, we challenge this assumed marginality. Using a novel communication task, we investigated pointing preferences in the Yupno of Papua New Guinea and in U.S. undergraduates. Speakers in both groups pointed at similar rates, but form preferences differed starkly: The Yupno participants used non-manual pointing (nose- and head-pointing) numerically more often than manual pointing, whereas the U.S. participants stuck unwaveringly to index-finger pointing. The findings raise questions about why groups differ in their pointing preferences and, more broadly, about why humans communicate in the ways they do.