Different Ways of Making a Point: A Study of Gestural Communication in Typical and Atypical Early Development

Abstract

Deictic pointing is among the most impaired gestures in children with autism. Research on typical development demonstrates that contact with the referent and handshape when pointing, are associated with different communicative intentions and developmental stages. Despite their importance, the morphological features of pointing remain largely unexplored in autism. The aim of the present study was to map out pointing production in autism with a focus on handshape and contact with the referent. Participants (age range = 1–6 years old) with ASD (n = 16), at high risk for autism (n = 13) and typically developing children (n = 18) interacted with their caregivers in a gesture elicitation task. Results showed that children with ASD produced fewer pointing gestures overall and fewer index finger pointing without contact with the referent compared to the typically developing children. Lay Summary Children with autism produce less gestures than typical children, and pointing gestures appear to be more affected than other gesture types. Whether children point using their index finger or the palm, and whether they touch or not the referent is crucial for understanding communicative intentions. This is the first study to document experimentally exactly how pointing gestures differ in autism in comparison to typical development. We found important qualitative differences in the communicative patterns of children with autism and at risk for autism, that may serve to identify potential new markers for early diagnosis. Autism Res 2021, 14: 984–996. © 2020 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

You may point, but do not touch: Impact of gesture-types and cognition on language in typical and atypical development

“…Moreover, these features allow to distinguish aspects of gesture production between children with and at-risk for autism, and typically developing children [16]. The key role of these two features was also confirmed by the first analysis in the current paper.…”

“…This is important for two reasons: 1) the fact that children tend to use open palm gestures when interacting with their mothers [50,8] clearly suggests that there is a distinct underlying communicative pattern in ASD, and 2) hand features are relevant in the prediction of spoken language abilities also in ASD. Additionally, there is recent evidence of impairment in index finger pointing in ASD [16], consistent with the previous evidence of impaired declarative pointing typically characterized by an extended index finger [46,57]. However, the imperative/declarative categorization entails the subjective assessment of pointing, as it requires that the researcher infers whether the child has produced a pointing gesture with the purpose of communicating socially or with the purpose of obtaining something.…”

“…This is consistent with the fact that distal gestures, such as pointing, are better predictors of language with increasing age, in comparison to proximal gestures, such as reaching [11,10]). Ramos Cabo et al [16] argue that pointing without contact with the referent is based on more cognitively advanced mechanisms than pointing with contact.…”

“…There is also evidence that TD infants point more often with the index finger when they vocalize [13], and they use no contact pointing when they interact with their caregivers in social contexts. We therefore developed a formal classification system of gesture features for the analyses in the current study (see for details [16]). Two features were of specific interest, the presence/absence of contact, and using the index finger while pointing.…”

“…Additionally, pointing with the index finger, as opposed to open palm pointing, has been shown to be strongly associated with vocalizations and declarative communicative intent in typical development (TD) [12][13] and in children with autism [8,14,15]. However, despite recent evidence of a differential interactive-communicative pattern in autism in terms of handshape and contact with the referent [16], no study has investigated the impact of these formal manual features on the language development of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Furthermore, although cognitive abilities are inherent to gestures, no study has explored the specific role of different features of gesture morphology and cognitive skills in the development of communicative abilities and spoken language in childhood.…”