Does Intention Matter? Relations between Parent Pointing, Infant Pointing, and Developing Language Ability

Abstract

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

“…This association held even after controlling for declarative pointing gestures at pre‐intervention. Thus, these findings suggest that the intervention was effective in increasing not only gesture frequency (Rowe & Leech, 2019), but also declarative intentions of such gestures that are known to promote child language development (Salo et al, 2019; Tomasello et al, 2007). What is intriguing is that only declarative pointing gestures significantly increased, even though the training video contained the messages about the use of both declarative and imperative pointing gestures (see examples in Methods).…”

“…These pointing gestures were then coded more specifically for the current analysis, as whether they were used declaratively or imperatively based on context (e.g., speech associated with gesture, referent of gesture). Following previous work (Choi et al, 2021; Salo et al, 2019), we coded gestures as declarative when they were used to share information or attention to an object, person, and event in the environment or coded gestures as imperative when they were used to direct or control a partner's behavior (Table 1 for definitions and examples). Independent raters coded parent pointing gestures for a randomly selected 20% of the transcripts.…”

“…Recent studies have suggested that gestures with different communicative intentions are differentially related to child language development. Salo et al (2019), for example, reported that mothers’ declarative, but not imperative, points related to concurrent receptive vocabulary in typically developing children at 12 months. Similarly, Choi et al (2021) found that parents’ declarative gesture use at 12 months predicted later vocabulary outcomes at 36 months in children at high and low familial risk for autism.…”

Developmental Pathways Between Infant Gestures and Symbolic Actions, and Children’s Communicative Skills at Age 5: Findings From the All Our Families Pregnancy Cohort

“…When considering communicative gestures, direct links have been found between pointing and language, for both language comprehension and production (e.g., Colonnesi, Stams, Koster, & Noom, 2010; Iverson & Goldin‐Meadow, 2005; Rowe & Goldin‐Meadow, 2009; Salo, Reeb‐Sutherland, Frenkel, Bowman, & Rowe, 2019). For example, a longitudinal study of infants aged 6–18 months demonstrated that children who pointed had larger vocabularies than children who did not point, in both cross‐sectional and longitudinal observations (Moore, Dailey, Garrison, Amatuni, & Bergelson, 2019).…”

Developmental pathways between infant gestures and symbolic actions, and children’s communicative skills at age 5: Findings from the All Our Families pregnancy cohort

“…When considering communicative gestures, direct links have been found between pointing and language, for both language comprehension and production (e.g., Colonnessi et al, 2010;Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005;Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009;Salo et al, 2019). For example, a longitudinal study of infants aged 6 to 18 months demonstrated that children who pointed had larger vocabularies than children who did not point, in both cross-sectional and longitudinal observations (Moore et al, 2019).…”