Development of Infant Pointing from 10 to 12 months: The Role of Relevant Caregiver Responsiveness

Infants’ pointing frequency is a predictor of their later language abilities. Yet, predictors of pointing frequency in the first year of life are not well understood. Study 1 explored what factors in infants and caregivers at 10 months would predict the pointing frequency of infants at 12 months (N = 35). Infant‐driven predictors were infants’ fine‐motor skills and point‐following abilities. Caregiver‐mediated predictors were caregivers’ pointing frequency and responsiveness toward infants’ pointing. Relevant caregiver responsiveness at 10 months predicted infants’ pointing frequency at 12 months, controlling for the other factors and infants’ prior pointing frequency. Study 2 explored whether child‐level factors influence caregivers’ responsiveness (N = 49). We examined the hand shape of infants’ pointing (whole‐hand versus index‐finger) and the presence of point‐accompanying vocalizations. Infants’ vocalization‐accompanied points were more likely to elicit relevant responses from caregivers, while hand shapes played a less pronounced role. Together, the findings reveal an early emerging mutual relationship between infant pointing and caregiver behavior such that certain characteristics of infant pointing predict caregivers’ responsiveness, and relevant responsiveness toward infants’ pointing predicts the increase in infants’ pointing frequencies.     

What's the point? Infants' and adults' perception of different pointing gestures

Adults and infants as young as 4 months old orient to pointing gestures. Although adults are shown to orient faster to index-finger pointing than other hand shapes, it is unknown whether hand shapes influence infants' perception of pointing. In this study, we used a spatial cueing paradigm on an eye tracker to investigate whether and to what extent adults and 12-month-old infants orient their attention in the direction of pointing gestures with different hand shapes: index finger, whole hand, and pinky finger. Furthermore, we assessed infants' and their parents' pointing production. Results revealed that adults showed a reliable cueing effect: shorter saccadic reaction times (SRTs) to congruent than incongruent targets, for all hand shapes. However, they did not show a larger cueing effect triggered by the index or any other finger. This contradicts previous findings and is discussed with respect to the differences in methodology. Infants showed a cueing effect only for the whole hand but not for the index or pinky fingers. The current results suggest that infants' orienting to pointing may be more robust for the whole hand shape in the first year, and tuning in to the social-communicative relevance of the canonical index finger shape may develop later or require additional social-communicative cues.     

“Wrong place to get help”: A field experiment on luxury stores and helping behavior

Three experiments were conducted in field settings. It was hypothesized that luxury stores may act as environmental reminders of materialism and that helpfulness would vary according to the presence or absence of such cues. Study 1 (N = 80) indicated that consumers coming out of famous brand stores displayed less helpfulness, as compared to mere passersby. Study 2 (N = 112) showed passersby were less helpful near a luxury brand store than in an ordinary street with no shops. In Study 3 (N = 360), passersby were less helpful when walking down a street lined with highly exclusive stores, as compared to streets with ordinary stores or no stores. Results, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Effect of finger interaction on individual finger: index finger

Grip strength is affected by such as enslaving effect, force sharing effect, and force deficit effect relating to the interaction among fingers. The author attempts to analyze index finger strength according to grip span of adjacent middle finger. 6 male graduate students participated as subjects in this experiment. The grip span has been applied from 45 mm to 60mm to investigate the effects of a coordination of grip spans on the index and middle finger strength. Results showed that index finger strength was the smallest in case of index finger grip span of 45 mm. Index finger strength decreased as the middle finger grip span. In general index finger strength shared a decreasing trend when the grip span of the middle finger increased. This study has an implication that the grip span of index and middle fingers influences force sharing effect on index finger.     

The Relationship Between Infant Holdout and Gives,and Pointing

We provide an analysis of holdout and giving (Ho&G) behaviours in prelinguistic infants and investigate their relationship with index finger pointing. The frequency of Ho&Gs at 10 and 11 months along with the length of the following social interaction correlated with index finger pointing at 12 months. We conclude that Ho&Gs are a precursor to index finger pointing and that this provides support for social‐pragmatic approaches to communicative development.     

12‐Month‐Old Infants' Perception of Attention Direction in Static Video Images

Twelve‐month‐old infants' ability to perceive gaze direction in static video images was investigated. The images showed a woman who performed attention‐directing actions by looking or pointing toward 1 of 4 objects positioned in front of her (2 on each side). When the model just pointed at the objects, she looked straight ahead, and when she just looked, her hands were hidden below the tabletop. An eye movement system (TOBII) was used to register the gaze of the participants. We found that the infants clearly discriminated the gaze directions to the objects. There was no tendency to mix up the 2 object positions, located 10° apart, on the same side of the model. The infants spent more time looking at the attended objects than the unattended ones and they shifted gaze more often from the face of the model to the attended object than to the unattended objects. Pointing did not significantly increase the infants' tendency to move gaze to the attended object, irrespective of whether the pointing gesture was accompanied by looking or not. In all conditions the infants spent most of the time looking at the model's face. This tendency was especially noticeable in the pointing‐only condition and the condition where the model just looked straight ahead.     

The Pointing–Vocal Coupling Progression in the First Half of the Second Year of Life

This study investigated the development of the pointing–vocal coupling system. We were interested in the infants’ behavior to attune prosody with pointing intentions. Twenty‐five children were involved at 12, 15, and 18 months of age in an experimental procedure devised to elicit imperative and declarative pointing. Pointing, vocality associated with pointing, and the prosody of that vocality were analyzed. A significant increase in the coupling of pointing and vocality was observed from 12 to 15 months, and in the ability to differentiate prosody with respect to the intention of the gesture from 15 to 18 months. Also, the infants who pointed declaratively at 12 months were likely to couple declarative pointing with vocality at 15 months, and the infants who coupled at 15 months were likely to differentiate prosody by the pointing intention at 18 months. Results suggest that the match between prosody and pointing intentions emerges gradually during the first half of the second year of life. They also show a relationship between earlier and later pointing–vocal coupling, and a role for declarative communication in promoting that progression. Overall, our study supports the view of intentional communication as a time‐based and context‐based developmental process.     

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.     

Quantity and Quality of Gestural Input: Caregivers’ Sensitivity Predicts Caregiver–Infant Bidirectional Communication Through Gestures

Children's use of pointing and symbolic gestures—early communication skills which predict later language—is influenced by frequency of adults’ gestures. However, we wonder whether, like language, the sensitivity of adult–child interactions is also important for encouraging child gesturing, rather than simply quantity of adult gestural input. Furthermore, children's use of gestures influences qualities of adult–child interaction, eliciting greater responsiveness and richer communication. Thus, we investigated the moderating role of nonparental caregiver sensitivity on the relationship between caregivers’ and infants’ use of pointing and symbolic gestures. We observed 10 infants (ages 6–19 months) over 8 months with a total of 24 student caregivers completing short‐term internships, recording adult and child use of pointing and symbolic gestures. We used longitudinal growth models to examine change in gesturing and moderating roles of caregiver sensitivity in the relations between caregiver and child gesturing behavior. Caregivers’ sensitivity moderated effects of caregivers’ symbolic gestures on infants’ pointing and symbolic gestures, and the effects of infants’ pointing and symbolic gesture frequency on caregivers’ gesture use. Thus, caregivers’ gestures are most effective in supporting child gestures when in the context of sensitive interactions. Sensitivity is central to supporting children's early communicative behaviors, including pointing and symbolic gestures.     

The context of infants' giving gestures in mother-infant dyads: Typical giving gestures and those contingent on exploration and play

This study aimed to focus on a niche that has not yet been investigated in infants' gesture studies that is the effect of the prior context of one specific gestural behavior (gives) on maternal behavior. For this purpose, we recruited 23 infants at 11 and 13 months of age yielded 246 giving gesture bouts that were performed in three contexts: typical when the object was offered immediately, contingent on exploration, and contingent on play. The analysis revealed that maternal responses to infants' giving gestures varied and were affected by their age and gesture context. Hence, mothers amended their responses according to the background that generated each gesture. The number of verbal responses to infants' giving gestures decreased as the infants aged, whereas the number of pretense responses increased. For infants aged 11 months, mothers generally provided motor responses to typical gestures. However, for infants aged 13 months, this trend declined and was replaced by a strong positive correlation between giving gestures contingent on play and verbal responses. We concluded that the type of activity with objects prior to employing giving gestures could enhance infants' symbolic skills because caregivers monitor the contingent act that yields the gesture that shapes their response.     

Color, Labels, and Interpretive Heuristics for Response Scales

We carried out two experiments to investigate how the shadingof the options in a response scale affected the answers to thesurvey questions. The experiments were embedded in two web surveys,and they varied whether the two ends of the scale were representedby shades of the same or different hues. The experiments alsovaried the numerical labels for the scale points and examinedresponses to both unipolar scales (assessing frequency) andbipolar scales (assessing favorability). We predicted that theuse of different hues would affect how respondents viewed thelow end of the scale, making responses to that end seem moreextreme than when the two ends were shades of the same hue.This hypothesis was based on the notion that respondents usevarious interpretive heuristics in assigning meaning to thevisual features of survey questions. One such cue is visualsimilarity. When two options are similar in appearance, respondentswill see them as conceptually closer than when they are dissimilarin appearance. The results were generally consistent with thisprediction. When the end points of the scale were shaded indifferent hues, the responses tended to shift toward the highend of the scale, as compared to scales in which both ends ofthe scale were shaded in the same hue. Though noticeable, thisshift was less extreme than the similar shift produced whennegative numbers were used to label one end of the scale; moreover,the effect of color was eliminated when each scale point hada verbal label. These findings suggest that respondents havedifficulty using scales and pay attention even to incidentalfeatures of the response scales in interpreting the scale points.     

Therapist-worldview matching: not as important as matching to clients

In this essay, we respond to Simon's article (2012). We discuss our view that therapy works best when therapists can match therapeutic interventions to the worldview of clients. We see this matching to client worldview as rooted in research evidence, and we suggest that therapists can practice authentically and effectively using more than one divergent therapy approach. We conclude the paper by pointing out points of disagreement we have with Simon's use of Davis and Piercy's (Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2007a; 33, 298; Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2007b, 32, 515) study, a study Simon uses to ground his arguments.     

Looking represents choosing in toddlers: Exploring the equivalence between multimodal measures in forced-choice tasks

In the two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) paradigm, manual responses such as pointing have been widely used as measures to estimate cognitive abilities. While pointing measurements can be easily collected, coded, analyzed, and interpreted, absent responses are often observed particularly when adopting these measures for toddler studies, which leads to an increase of missing data. Although looking responses such as preferential looking can be available as alternative measures in such cases, it is unknown how well looking measurements can be interpreted as equivalent to manual ones. This study aimed to answer this question by investigating how accurately pointing responses (i.e., left or right) could be predicted from concurrent preferential looking. Using pre-existing videos of toddlers aged 18–23 months engaged in an intermodal word comprehension task, we developed models predicting manual from looking responses. Results showed substantial prediction accuracy for both the Simple Majority Vote and Machine Learning-Based classifiers, which indicates that looking responses would be reasonable alternative measures of manual ones. However, the further exploratory analysis revealed that when applying the created models for data of toddlers who did not produce clear pointing responses, the estimation agreement of missing pointing between the models and the human coders slightly dropped. This indicates that looking responses without pointing were qualitatively different from those with pointing. Bridging two measurements in forced-choice tasks would help researchers avoid wasting collected data due to the absence of manual responses and interpret results from different modalities comprehensively.     

RACIAL/ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN THE POLITICAL BEHAVIOR OF AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS

In this study we present evidence which supports the use of retrospective research designs to study the transition from delinquency to adult deviance. Delinquency rates based on adolescents’ responses to the Richmond Youth Study in 1965 are compared to the rates based on retrospective accounts of delinquency provided by adults to the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study in 1981–82. These comparisons were enhanced by controlling for race, sex, birth cohort and the greater period at risk of delinquency experienced by the adult respondents. The item specific pattern of adolescent behavior recalled by adult respondents in 1981–82 is very similar to that reported by adolescents in 1965.     

Pointing as Epistemic Request: 12‐month‐olds Point to Receive New Information

Infants start pointing systematically to objects or events around their first birthday. It has been proposed that infants point to an event to share their appreciation of it with others. In this study, we tested another hypothesis, according to which infants’ pointing could also serve as an epistemic request directed to the adult. Thus, infants’ motivation for pointing could include the expectation that adults would provide new information about the referent. In two experiments, an adult reacted to 12‐month‐olds’ pointing gestures by exhibiting “Informing” or “Sharing” behavior. In response, infants pointed more frequently across trials in the Informing than in the Sharing condition. This suggests that the feedback that contained new information matched infants’ expectations more than mere attention sharing. Such a result is consistent with the idea that not just the comprehension but also the production of early communicative signals is tuned to assist infants’ learning from others.     

At 10–12 Months,Pointing Gesture Handedness Predicts the Size of Receptive Vocabularies

The close association between language and gesture has been widely studied (McNeill, Psychological Review, 92, 1985, 350). It remains unclear, however, when and how this relationship originates ontogenetically. This study investigated the relationship between vocabulary development and pointing handedness in 10‐ to 12‐month‐old infants. The study used cross‐sectional data from 16 infants. Infants took part in a pointing elicitation task and a grasping task to assess their pointing and grasping handedness. Further, parents filled out the Oxford Communicative Development Inventory (Hamilton, Plunkett, & Schafer, Journal of Child Language, 27, 2000, 689) to assess infants’ receptive and productive vocabularies. The result showed a positive, significant correlation between receptive vocabulary development and right‐handed pointing. This relationship was not due to age or to vocalizations, which have not been ruled out by previous studies. Possible mechanisms behind this codevelopment are discussed.     

Penny for Your Thoughts: Beggars and the Exercise of Morality in Daily Life1

Urban sociology has tended to study interactions between passersby and “street persons” with an emphasis on the ways street persons become bothersome, harassing, or dangerous. This article moves away from the focus on the ways interactions in public go awry and focuses on how individuals account for the mundane, everyday exchanges they have with strangers who seek their help. Based on interview data (N = 31) and qualitative analysis of data from an Internet survey (N = 110), this article suggests that the presence of beggars does not inherently symbolize urban decay to passersby and does not necessarily elicit anxiety, but instead provides a valuable texture of urban life. Further, the article argues that individuals, when justifying their responses to requests for help from needy persons (beggars) in urban spaces, use a variety of cultural strategies to maintain their perception of themselves as moral persons, both when they choose to help and when they refuse. Drawing from these findings, the article suggests that urban sociology and the sociology of risk would benefit from sensitizing their studies of public interactions to the diverse meanings individuals assign to them, rather than presupposing annoyance, anxiety, or fear as their predominant characteristic.     

Representational Gesture,Pointing Gesture,and Memory Recall of Preschool Children

This study investigated the effects of two different types of hand gestures on memory recall of preschool children. Experiment 1 found that children who were instructed to use representational gestures while retelling an unfamiliar story retrieved more information about the story than children who were asked to hold their hands still. In addition, children who engaged in some forms of bodily movements other than hand gestures also recalled better. Experiment 2 showed that a simpler and more basic form of gesture, the pointing gesture, had a similar effect on recollecting and retelling the details of a story. The findings provide evidence for the beneficial effects of hand gestures, both representational gestures and pointing gestures, on cognitive processes such as memory retrieval and verbal communication for preschool aged children.     

The effect of Video Display Terminal (VDT) mouse use on muscle contractions in the neck and forearm

This study used surface electromyography (EMG) to examine the percent of maximum voluntary contraction (%MVC) of the upper trapezius, the flexors of the wrist/fingers and extensors of the wrist/fingers during Video Display Terminal (VDT) mouse use with the mouse positioned either next to the computer or on a lapdesk. Thirty participants, between the ages of 18 and 40, used a VDT mouse to follow a prescribed pattern for three trials at each location. Although there was a trend towards the lapdesk location producing lower %MVC than the computer location for the trapezius and wrist/finger flexors (lapdesk: trapezius M 4.71%, wrist/finger flexors M 3.53%; computer: trapezius M 5.74%, wrist/finger flexors M 3.94%) a two way ANOVA controlling for sequence and order found no significant difference between the means. There was no trend for the effects of location for the wrist/finger extensors. These results suggest that changing the position of the mouse may not significantly reduce muscle contractions.