A new online paradigm to measure spontaneous pointing in infants and caregivers.

Index-finger pointing is a milestone in the development of referential communication. Previous research has investigated infants' pointing with a variety of paradigms ranging from parent reports to field observations to experimental settings, suggesting that lab-based semi-natural interactional settings seem especially suited to elicit and measure infant pointing. With the Covid-pandemic the need for a comparable online tool became evident enabling also efficient, low-cost, large-scale, diverse data collection. The current study introduces a remote online paradigm, based on the established live 'decorated-room' paradigm. In Experiment 1, 12-months old infants and their caregivers (N = 24) looked at digitally presented stimuli together while being recorded with their webcam. We coded pointing gestures of infants and caregivers as well as caregivers' responses to infants' pointing. In Experiment 2 (N = 47), we optimized stimuli and investigated influences of stimulus characteristics. We systematically varied the style of depiction, stimulus complexity, motion, and facial stimuli. Main findings were that infants and caregivers pointed spontaneously, with mean behaviors ranging within the benchmarks of previously reported findings of the live decorated-room paradigm. Further, the social setting was preserved as revealed by significant relations between parents' responsive points and infants' pointing frequency. Analyses of stimuli characteristics revealed that infants pointed more to stimuli depicting faces than to other stimuli. The new remote online paradigm proves a useful addition to established paradigms. It offers novel opportunities for simplified assessments, large-scale sampling, and worldwide, diversified data collection.

The pupil collaboration: A multi-lab, multi-method analysis of goal attribution in infants.

The rise of pupillometry in infant research over the last decade is associated with a variety of methods for data preprocessing and analysis. Although pupil diameter is increasingly recognized as an alternative measure of the popular cumulative looking time approach used in many studies (Jackson & Sirois, 2022), an open question is whether the many approaches used to analyse this variable converge. To this end, we proposed a crowdsourced approach to pupillometry analysis. A dataset from 30 9-month-old infants (15 girls; Mage = 282.9 days, SD = 8.10) was provided to 7 distinct teams for analysis. The data were obtained from infants watching video sequences showing a hand, initially resting between two toys, grabbing one of them (after Woodward, 1998). After habituation, infants were shown (in random order) a sequence of four test events that varied target position and target toy. Results show that looking times reflect primarily the familiar path of the hand, regardless of target toy. Gaze data similarly show this familiarity effect of path. The pupil dilation analyses show that features of pupil baseline measures (duration and temporal location) as well as data retention variation (trial and/or participant) due to different inclusion criteria from the various analysis methods are linked to divergences in findings. Two of the seven teams found no significant findings, whereas the remaining five teams differ in the pattern of findings for main and interaction effects. The discussion proposes guidelines for best practice in the analysis of pupillometry data.

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.

Don't miss the chance to reap the fruits of recent advances in behavioral genetics.

In her target article, Burt revives a by now ancient debate on nature and nurture, and the ways to measure, disentangle, and ultimately trust one or the other of these forces. Unfortunately, she largely dismisses recent advances in behavior genetics and its huge potential in contributing to a better prediction and understanding of complex traits in social sciences.

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.

How robust are egocentric and altercentric interference effects in social cognition? a test with explicit and implicit versions of a continuous false belief task.

It has been long assumed that meta-representational theory of mind (ToM) -our ability to ascribe mental states to ourselves and other people- emerges around age four as indicated in performance on explicit verbal false belief tasks. In contrast, newer studies assessing false belief understanding with implicit, non-verbal measures suggest that some form of ToM may be present even in infancy. But these studies now face replication issues, and it remains unclear whether they can provide robust evidence for implicit ToM. One line of research on implicit ToM, however, may remain promising: Studies that tap so-called altercentric biases. Such biases occur when agents in their judgments about the world are influenced (perform slower, more error-prone) in light of another agent's deviating perspective even if that perspective is completely irrelevant to the task; they thus can be seen as indicators of spontaneous and implicit ToM. Altercentric biases are the mirror images of egocentric biases (agents are influenced by their own perspective when evaluating another agent's deviating perspective). In three studies with adults, we aimed to tap both egocentric and altercentric interference effects within the same task format. We used the so-called Sandbox task, a false belief task with continuous locations. In Study 1, we tested an online adaptation of the Sandbox task, which we also used to explore potential cross-cultural differences in these biases. Studies 2 and 3 combined the Sandbox task with mouse-tracking measures. These studies revealed neither egocentric nor altercentric biases. These null results are discussed with regard to the question whether absence of evidence here may present evidence of absence of such spontaneous perspective-taking biases or merely false negatives.

Ontogeny of index-finger pointing.

Index-finger pointing is foundational to language acquisition. Less is known about its emergence. In lab-based monthly longitudinal assessments from 8-13 months (N = 31) the study measured longitudinal predictors of index-finger pointing: parent pointing and infants' earlier emerging showing, hand-pointing, and point-following. All behaviors increased significantly with age and showed inter-individual stability. At 11 months all behaviors except hand pointing were synchronously interrelated, with no evidence for an earlier synchronous interrelation between behaviors. Caregiver pointing and infants' earlier behaviors longitudinally predicted the age of emergence of index-finger pointing. An additional cross-sectional comparison of parent pointing at 5 and 7 months (N = 44) showed that significantly fewer caregivers of 5- compared to 7-month-olds pointed for their infants. Findings suggest that pointing emerges as an outcome of social co-construction across the first year of life.

Marked pointing facilitates learning part names: A test of lexical constraint versus social pragmatic accounts of word learning.

The empirical study of word learning is driven by a theoretical debate between lexical constraint and social-pragmatic accounts; it has still not been determined which of these two best explains the evidence. We investigated whether the markedness of a pointing accompanying a verbal reference could help to learn a part name. Participants were 35 two-and-a-half-year-olds, 42 four-and-a-half-year-olds, and 38 undergraduate university students in Japan. The experimenter pointed to a novel part (embedded in a novel whole object) with either "marked" pointing, which was touching the part with a small circular motion, or with usual pointing. Touch accompanied by circular motion reliably elicited learning of part names in all age groups. Usual distal pointing without motion reliably elicited learning of whole object names. The pattern of findings rejects a whole-object constraint in early word learning and demonstrates that marked pointing can promote learning novel part names, supporting a social-pragmatic account.

In Bilinguals' Hands: Identification of Bilingual, Preverbal Infants at Risk for Language Delay.

Studies with monolingual infants show that the gestural behavior of 1-2-year-olds is a strong predictor for later language competencies and, more specifically, that the absence of index-finger pointing at 12 months seems to be a valid indicator for risk of language delay (LD). In this study a lack of index-finger pointing at 12 months was utilized as diagnostic criterion to identity infants with a high risk for LD at 24 months in a sample of 42 infants growing up bilingually. Results confirm earlier findings from monolinguals showing that 12-month-olds who point with the extended index finger have an advanced language status at 24 months and are less likely language delayed than infants who only point with the whole hand and do not produce index-finger points at 12 months.

Developmental Paths of Pointing for Various Motives in Infants with and without Language Delay.

Pointing is one of the first conventional means of communication and infants have various motives for engaging in it such as imperative, declarative, or informative. Little is known about the developmental paths of producing and understanding these different motives. In our longitudinal study (N = 58) during the second year of life, we experimentally elicited infants' pointing production and comprehension in various settings and under pragmatically valid conditions. We followed two steps in our analyses and assessed the occurrence of canonical index-finger pointing for different motives and the engagement in an ongoing interaction in pursuit of a joint goal revealed by frequency and multimodal utterances. For understanding the developmental paths, we compared two groups: typically developing infants (TD) and infants who have been assessed as having delayed language development (LD). Results showed that the developmental paths differed according to the various motives. When comparing the two groups, for all motives, LD infants produced index-finger pointing 2 months later than TD infants. For the engagement, although the pattern was less consistent across settings, the frequency of pointing was comparable in both groups, but infants with LD used less canonical forms of pointing and made fewer multimodal contributions than TD children.

Mirroring Communicative Actions: Contextual Modulation of Mu Rhythm Desynchronization in Response to the 'Back-Of-Hand' Action in 9-Month-Old Infants.

This study measured mu rhythm desynchronization (MRD), while nine-month-old infants observed an agent extend her arm and hand, palm up ('back-of-hand action') either in social (object and recipient present), individual (object present, recipient absent), or social object-absent (recipient present, object absent) situations across two experiments. In addition, infants' MRD was measured as they reached for objects. Results revealed significant mu desynchronization in the right centro-parietal region selectively for the social group, indicating that infants processed the back-of-hand action as an object-directed request. Findings suggest to extend the action reconstruction account to object-directed communicative actions as well.

The Emergence of Lying for Reputational Concerns in 5-Year-Olds.

Research suggests that even young children engage in strategic behaviors to manipulate the impressions others form of them and that they manage their reputation in order to cooperate with others. The current study investigated whether young children also lie in order to manage their, or their group's, reputation in front of ingroup and outgroup members. Five-year old children (n=55) were randomly assigned to an individual reputation condition or a group reputation condition. Then, they played a mini dictator game in which they could share privately any number of their or their group's stickers with an anonymous child. Participants then met ingroup and outgroup members, established through a minimal group design, via a pre-recorded, staged Skype call. Group members asked the participant how many stickers she, or her group, had donated. Results revealed that children stated to peers to have donated more than their actual donation, with no differences between conditions and no difference toward ingroup and outgroup members. Findings suggest that by 5years of age, children use lying as a strategy to manage their reputation.

Number and type of toys affect joint attention of mothers and infants.

Establishing joint attention with a caregiver on a physical object provides an optimal environment for language learning for infants. In the present study, we investigated whether 12-month-olds and their mothers establish higher quality joint attention interactions in the presence of fewer compared to more toys. As a secondary goal, we investigated how different types of toys affect how mother-infant dyads establish joint attention. In a five-minute free play setting, mothers and infants participated in either Five Toy (n = 48) or Twelve Toy (n = 33) groups. They were given organizational (i.e., toys that require arrangement of parts), responsive (i.e., toys that emit sounds via manipulation), and symbolic toys (i.e., toys that elicit pretend play). Results showed that compared to the Twelve Toy group, joint attention interactions in the Five Toy group were less frequent, lasted longer, were more likely to be initiated by maternal following than by maternal directing of infants' attention, and more likely to be coordinated in which infants demonstrated awareness of the mothers' simultaneous attentional focus by looking at their mothers, vocalizing, or turn-taking. We further found longer joint attention durations on organizational compared to symbolic toys, which were preferred to a lesser extent by the dyads. With responsive toys, mothers were more likely to initiate joint attention by following their infants' attention. Joint attention interactions lasted longer and were more likely to be coordinated in the second half compared to the first half of the play session, suggesting that over time it became easier for the mothers and infants to settle on certain toys for more elaborate play. In sum, mothers and infants establish higher-quality joint attention with fewer toys in general and with organizational toys in particular.

Inferring hidden objects from still and communicative onlookers at 8, 14, and 36 months of age.

The current study investigated across five eye-tracking experiments children's developing skill of adopting others' referential perspective (Level 1 perspective taking) and to what extent it involves automatic processes or requires ostensive communicative cues. Three age groups (8-, 14-, and 36-month-olds) were tested on their expectation of an object appearing behind one of two peripheral occluders. A centrally presented person in profile either provided an ostensive communicative pointing cue or sat still, oriented to one of the two occluders. The 14-month-olds anticipated the hidden object when the onlooker had communicatively pointed to the location, as revealed by faster target detection in congruent trials (latency effect) and longer dwell times to the empty side in incongruent trials (violation-of-expectation effect). This was not the case when a still person was only oriented to one side. Adding emotional expressions to the still person (Experiment 2) did not help to produce the effects. However, at 36 months of age (Experiment 3), children showed both effects for the still person. The 8-month-olds did not show the violation-of-expectation effect for communicative pointing (Experiment 4) or for a matched abbreviated reach (Experiment 5b), showing it only for a complete reach behind the occluder (Experiment 5a), although they were faster to detect the congruent object in Experiment 4 and 5a. Findings reveal that automatic perspective taking develops after communicative perspective taking and that communicative perspective taking is a developmental outcome of the first year of life. The developmental pattern suggests a continuous social construction process of perspective-taking skills.

Three-year-olds' spontaneous lying in a novel interaction-based paradigm and its relations to explicit skills and motivational factors.

Previous research has investigated children's lying and its motivational and social-cognitive correlates mostly through explicit tasks. The current study used an anticipatory interaction-based paradigm adopted from research with preverbal infants. We investigated 3-year-olds' spontaneous lying within interaction and its motivational basis and relations to explicit skills of lying, false belief understanding, inhibitory control, and socialization. Children interacted with puppets to secure stickers that were hidden in one of two boxes. Either a friend or a competitor puppet tried to obtain the stickers. Nearly all children helpfully provided information about the sticker's location to the friend, and about half of the sample anticipatorily provided false information to the competitor. Children misinformed the competitor significantly more often than the friend, both when the reward was for themselves and when it was for someone else. Explicitly planning to lie in response to a question occurred significantly less often but predicted spontaneous lying, as did passing the explicit standard false belief task. Thus, by 3 years of age, children spontaneously invoke false beliefs in others. This communicative skill reveals an interactional use of false belief understanding in that it requires holding one's perspective to pursue one's goal while providing a different perspective to distract a competitor. Findings support the view that practical theory of mind skills emerge for social coordination and serve as a basis for developing explicit false belief reasoning.

The development of gaze following in monolingual and bilingual infants: A multi-laboratory study.

Determining the meanings of words requires language learners to attend to what other people say. However, it behooves a young language learner to simultaneously encode relevant non-verbal cues, for example, by following the direction of their eye gaze. Sensitivity to cues such as eye gaze might be particularly important for bilingual infants, as they encounter less consistency between words and objects than monolingual infants, and do not always have access to the same word-learning heuristics (e.g., mutual exclusivity). In a preregistered study, we tested the hypothesis that bilingual experience would lead to a more pronounced ability to follow another's gaze. We used a gaze-following paradigm developed by Senju and Csibra (Current Biology, 18, 2008, 668) to test a total of 93 6- to 9-month-old and 229 12- to 15-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants, in 11 laboratories located in 8 countries. Monolingual and bilingual infants showed similar gaze-following abilities, and both groups showed age-related improvements in speed, accuracy, frequency, and duration of fixations to congruent objects. Unexpectedly, bilinguals tended to make more frequent fixations to on-screen objects, whether or not they were cued by the actor. These results suggest that gaze sensitivity is a fundamental aspect of development that is robust to variation in language exposure.

Actions do not speak louder than words in an interactive false belief task.

Traditionally, it had been assumed that meta-representational Theory of Mind (ToM) emerges around the age of 4 when children come to master standard false belief (FB) tasks. More recent research with various implicit measures, though, has documented much earlier competence and thus challenged the traditional picture. In interactive FB tasks, for instance, infants have been shown to track an interlocutor's false or true belief when interpreting her ambiguous communicative acts (Southgate et al. 2010 Dev. Sci. 13, 907-912. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00946.x)). However, several replication attempts so far have produced mixed findings (e.g. Dörrenberg et al. 2018 Cogn. Dev. 46, 12-30. (doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.01.001); Grosse Wiesmann et al. 2017 Dev. Sci. 20, e12445. (doi:10.1111/desc.12445); Király et al. 2018 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 11 477-11 482. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1803505115)). Therefore, we conducted a systematic replication study, across two laboratories, of an influential interactive FB task (the so-called 'Sefo' tasks by Southgate et al. 2010 Dev. Sci. 13, 907-912. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00946.x)). First, we implemented close direct replications with the original age group (17-month-olds) and compared their performance to those of 3-year-olds. Second, we designed conceptual replications with modifications and improvements regarding pragmatic ambiguities for 2-year-olds. Third, we validated the task with explicit verbal test versions in older children and adults. Results revealed the following: the original results could not be replicated, and there was no evidence for FB understanding measured by the Sefo task in any age group except for adults. Comparisons to explicit FB tasks suggest that the Sefo task may not be a sensitive measure of FB understanding in children and even underestimate their ToM abilities. The findings add to the growing replication crisis in implicit ToM research and highlight the challenge of developing sensitive, reliable and valid measures of early implicit social cognition.

Ontogenetic Emergence of Cognitive Reference Comprehension.

Prelinguistic cognitive reference comprehension is foundational to language acquisition and higher cognitive functions. However, its ontogenetic origins in the first year of life are currently not well understood. The current study pitted cognitivist against social interactionist views. We worked with infants monthly from 10 to 13 months of age and observed their behavioral search during a reference comprehension task. Our goal was to first establish the age at which infants begin to cognitively expect an occluded object in one of two locations following a communicative pointing cue. We then tested whether infants' cognitive referential expectations would prospectively predict social interaction skills and experiences (as assessed by spontaneous infant and parent pointing) or, conversely, be predicted by social interaction skills and experiences. Results revealed a linear increase in cognitive reference comprehension, with clear above chance performance, individual stability in month-to-month correlations, and a synchronous correlation to referential pointing all emerging at 12 months but not earlier. Regarding developmental predictions, infants' cognitive referential expectations were not predictive of social interaction skills and experiences; on the contrary, they were predicted by social interaction skills and experiences. Findings suggest that a nonverbal cognitive understanding of reference to occluded entities is neither early emerging, hard wired, nor causal to infants' or caregivers' referential pointing. Instead, this foundational skill is predicted by earlier social interaction. Findings are consistent with the view that cognitive reference comprehension develops via a social construction process in the first year of life.

Pupillometric VoE paradigm reveals that 18- but not 10-month-olds spontaneously represent occluded objects (but not empty sets).

Object permanence has been investigated with a variety of paradigms and measures, yielding heterogeneous findings. The current study employed a novel Violation-of-Expectation paradigm measuring pupil dilation as indicator of cognitive effort and surprise. Across repeated trials, infants watched videos of animated toys either stopping in an open door frame or moving across the open door frame off screen. The door then closed and opened up again to reveal either the toy, or an empty space. In Experiment 1, 18-month-olds's pupils dilated in response to the unexpected empty outcome more than to the expected empty outcome, establishing the paradigm as a suitable measure of violation of object expectation. Using the same paradigm, Experiment 2 revealed an absence of this object expectation effect for 10-month-olds. Results are discussed with regard to paradigmatic aspects and developmental differences. It is suggested that young infants do not automatically represent occluded objects upon perceiving occlusion events, and that occlusion events may initially require relevance in terms of individual activity or social interaction.

Integrated Communication System: Gesture and Language Acquisition in Typically Developing Children and Children With LD and DLD.

Gesture and language development are strongly connected to each other. Two types of gestures in particular are analyzed regarding their role for language acquisition: pointing and iconic gestures. With the present longitudinal study, the predictive values of index-finger pointing at 12 months and the comprehension of iconic gestures at 3;0 years for later language skills in typically developing (TD) children and in children with a language delay (LD) or developmental language disorder (DLD) are examined. Forty-two monolingual German children and their primary caregivers participated in the study and were followed longitudinally from 1;0 to 6;0 years. Within a total of 14 observation sessions, the gestural and language abilities of the children were measured using standardized as well as ad hoc tests, parent questionnaires and semi-natural interactions between the child and their caregivers. At the age of 2;0 years, 10 of the 42 children were identified as having a LD. The ability to point with the extended index finger at 1;0 year is predictive for language skills at 5;0 and 6;0 years. This predictive effect is mediated by the language skills of the children at 3;0 years. The comprehension of iconic gestures at 3;0 years correlates with index-finger pointing at 1;0 year and also with earlier and later language skills. It mediates the predictive value of index-finger pointing at 1;0 year for grammar skills at 5;0 and 6;0 years. Children with LD develop the ability to understand the iconicity in gestures later than TD children and score lower in language tests until the age of 6;0 years. The language differences between these two groups of children persist partially until the age of 5;0 years even when the two children with manifested DLD within the group of children with LD are excluded from analyses. Beyond that age, no differences in the language skills between children with and without a history of LD are found when children with a manifest DLD are excluded. The findings support the assumption of an integrated speech-gesture communication system, which functions similarly in TD children and children with LD or DLD, but with a time delay.