Sociocultural settings influence the emergence of prelinguistic deictic gestures

Daily activities of forty-eight 8- to 15-month-olds and their interlocutors were observed to test for the presence and frequency of triadic joint actions and deictic gestures across three different cultures: Yucatec-Mayans (Mexico), Dutch (Netherlands), and Shanghai-Chinese (China). The amount of joint action and deictic gestures to which infants were exposed differed systematically across settings, allowing testing for the role of social–interactional input in the ontogeny of prelinguistic gestures. Infants gestured more and at an earlier age depending on the amount of joint action and gestures infants were exposed to, revealing early prelinguistic sociocultural differences. The study shows that the emergence of basic prelinguistic gestures is socially mediated, suggesting that others' actions structure the ontogeny of human communication from early on

The origin of pointing: Evidence for the touch hypothesis

Pointing gestures play a foundational role in human language, but up to now, we have not known where these gestures come from. Here, we investigated the hypothesis that pointing originates in touch. We found, first, that when pointing at a target, children and adults oriented their fingers not as though trying to create an “}arrow{” that picks out the target but instead as though they were aiming to touch it; second, that when pointing at a target at an angle, participants rotated their wrists to match that angle as they would if they were trying to touch the target; and last, that young children interpret pointing gestures as if they were attempts to touch things, not as arrows. These results provide the first substantial evidence that pointing originates in touch

How Gesture Input Provides a Helping Hand to Language Development

Children use gesture to refer to objects before they produce labels for these objects and gesture–speech combinations to convey semantic relations between objects before conveying sentences in speech—a trajectory that remains largely intact across children with different developmental profiles. Can the developmental changes that we observe in children be traced back to the gestural input that children receive from their parents? A review of previous work shows that parents provide models for their children for the types of gestures and gesture–speech combinations to produce, and do so by modifying their gestures to meet the communicative needs of their children. More importantly, the gestures that parents produce, in addition to providing models, help children learn labels for referents and semantic relations between these referents and even predict the extent of children\u27s vocabularies several years later. The existing research thus highlights the important role parental gestures play in shaping children\u27s language learning trajectory

Beyond “Uniqueness”: Habitual Traits in the Context of Cognitive-Communicative Continuity

Abstract. The paper discusses a longstanding and prevailing debate in thefields of comparative psychology and language evolution, namely the problem of continuity of cognitive and communicative abilities. It is suggested that although this problem has been addressed by multiple researchers, it remains a persistent topic of discussion and an important meta-theoretical theme in the field of language evolution. To support this claim, the paper first provides a brief overview of the continuity debate by discussing examples of prominent research work in comparative communication and cognition. It further suggests that the problem of continuity can be partly resolved by focusing on cognitive and behavioural trait distribution both between and within species. Specifically, it is proposed that conceptualising given traits as habitual, rather than human-unique, is informative for understanding evolutionary processes shaping human communicative abilities. Finally, the paper suggests that the debate on continuity would benefit from being placed in a broader framework of evolution of phenotypic plasticity and the role of cognition and behavior in evolutionary processes

Способи формування соціально-емоційного розвитку у дітей дошкільного віку

The article talks about ways of shaping social-emotional development in preschool children. At the same time, the issues of the development of this process in different age periods are also touched upon. Ways to support social-emotional development are also included in the analysis. The article also examines the issues that ensure community and its development in the process of social development. Examples of games about this are given in the article.In addition, social and emotional development of a child from the first years of his life has a great influence on the development of his personality. Social development is the ability of the child to communicate, cooperate, work together with relatives, and then with children and adults, as well as mastering social norms. Emotional development means that the child understands the feelings of others, expresses his own feelings correctly and regulates his feelings. The social development of the child starts with the family and is continued in the pre-school educational institution. This chain continues and shows itself.For a child, the early age period is characterized by unstable emotional mood, emergence of emotions, sensitivity. All this determines the main directions of psychological work with children - the emotionality of the child's life and help in its regulation. In preschool children, social and emotional qualities develop together. The child regulates his emotional mood based on the norms of the social environment in which he lives. Through socio-emotional development, children develop a positive attitude towards people, kindness, care, mutual help, sharing in other people's pain, conflict resolution, etc. such moral qualities are formed. Children acquire basic skills of play, work and practical activities, rules of behavior in a team. During this period, various forms of initial interaction of children with adults and peers emerge. In the article, the work carried out in this direction is included in the analysis and detailed information is given about them. The fuller and more colorful the child's activity, the more important it is for the child and reflects his nature, the better his development will be.Анотація. У статті йдеться про способи формування соціально-емоційного розвитку у дітей дошкільного віку. При цьому зачіпаються і питання розвитку цього процесу в різні вікові періоди. Способи підтримки соціально-емоційного розвитку також включені в аналіз. У статті також досліджуються питання, які забезпечують спільноту та її розвиток у процесі суспільного розвитку. Приклади ігор про це наведені в статті.Крім того, соціальний та емоційний розвиток дитини з перших років його життя має великий вплив на розвиток його особистості. Соціальний розвиток - це здатність дитини спілкуватися, співпрацювати, працювати разом з родичами, а потім з дітьми і дорослими, а також оволодіння соціальними нормами. Емоційний розвиток означає, що дитина розуміє почуття інших, правильно висловлює власні почуття і регулює свої почуття. Соціальний розвиток дитини починається з сім'ї і продовжується в дошкільному навчальному закладі. Цей ланцюжок триває і показує себе.Для дитини ранній віковий період характеризується нестійким емоційним настроєм, виникненням емоцій, чутливістю. Все це визначає основні напрямки психологічної роботи з дітьми - емоційність життя дитини і допомогу в її регуляції. У дітей дошкільного віку соціальні та емоційні якості розвиваються разом. Дитина регулює свій емоційний настрій, виходячи з норм соціального середовища, в якому живе. Через соціально-емоційний розвиток у дітей формується позитивне ставлення до людей, доброта, турбота, взаємодопомога, участь в чужому болю, вирішення конфліктів тощо. Діти набувають базових навичок ігрової, трудової та практичної діяльності, правил поведінки в колективі. У цей період виникають різні форми первинної взаємодії дітей з дорослими і однолітками. У статті в аналіз включаються роботи, що ведуться в цьому напрямку, і наводиться докладна інформація про них. Чим повніше і барвистіше діяльність дитини, чим вона важливіше для дитини і відображає його характер, тим краще буде його розвиток

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

Should learners use their hands for learning? Results from an eye‐tracking study

Given the widespread use of touch screen devices, the effect of the users' fingers on information processing and learning is of growing interest. The present study drew on cognitive load theory and embodied cognition perspectives to investigate the effects of pointing and tracing gestures on the surface of a multimedia learning instruction. Learning performance, cognitive load and visual attention were examined in a one‐factorial experimental design with the between‐subject factor pointing and tracing gestures. The pointing and tracing group were instructed to use their fingers during the learning phase to make connections between corresponding text and picture information, whereas the control group was instructed not to use their hands for learning. The results showed a beneficial effect of pointing and tracing gestures on learning performance, a significant shift in visual attention and deeper processing of information by the pointing and tracing group, but no effect on subjective ratings of cognitive load. Implications for future research and practice are discussed

Early language experience in a Tseltal Mayan village

Daylong at-home audio recordings from 10 Tseltal Mayan children (0;2–3;0; Southern Mexico) were analyzed for how often children engaged in verbal interaction with others and whether their speech environment changed with age, time of day, household size, and number of speakers present. Children were infrequently directly spoken to, with most directed speech coming from adults, and no increase with age. Most directed speech came in the mornings, and interactional peaks contained nearly four times the baseline rate of directed speech. Coarse indicators of children's language development (babbling, first words, first word combinations) suggest that Tseltal children manage to extract the linguistic information they need despite minimal directed speech. Multiple proposals for how they might do so are discussed

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