Infants adapt their pointing frequency to experimentally manipulated parent responsiveness but not parent pointing

Abstract

Infant pointing is predictive of later language development, but little is known about factors enhancing the development of pointing. The current study investigated two possible social learning mechanisms in the development of pointing. Given that infants observe their caregivers' pointing gestures from early on, one possibility is learning via imitation. A second possibility is that caregivers' contingent reactions to infant communication promote communicative exchange, including pointing. To test which of these behaviours influences infants' pointing frequency, we manipulated parents' pointing frequency and their responsive behaviour via instructions in a cross‐sectional 2 × 3 design. We randomly assigned 12‐months‐old infants (N = 131, 65 females) and one of their parents to six different experimental groups. Participants were predominantly central Europeans from middle to high socioeconomic backgrounds. Data were collected with an online remote adaption of the decorated‐room paradigm. Parents successfully adapted their behaviours to the instructions. Parents' increased responsiveness, but not their increased pointing in general, significantly enhanced infants' pointing frequency (d = 0.36). Regression results further revealed that parents' responsive pointing positively predicted infants' pointing frequency. Findings question direct imitation accounts of pointing and identify responsive social interactions, including responsive pointing, as factors enhancing the occurrence of pointing in infancy.Highlights Imitation and responsive social interaction are possible social learning mechanisms in the development of pointing. Experimental manipulation of parental behaviours reveals that infant pointing increases when parents are particularly responsive, but not when parents point a lot in general. Parents' responsiveness through pointing gestures may be especially suited to enhance infants' pointing frequencies.