Toddlers' helping has been interpreted as early evidence of cooperation and altruism. We consider whether this important social activity might, instead, be due to toddlers' interest in participating in the activity of others, and we illustrate this possibility with diary observations of infants' social and communicative development. This alternative view of toddlers' helping as one manifestation of a more-general tendency for social engagement requires a different approach to the explanation of this aspect of social development. We argue for a relational developmental systems account of the emergence and further development of infants' social and emotional engagement leading to toddlers' helping.

Worldviews consist of preconceptions about the nature of mind, knowledge, and meaning, and these assumptions influence theorizing about human development and the interpretation of research. We outline two contrasting worldviews - dualist versus relational - and explicate the implications of such preconceptions for studying the development of pointing gestures. Pointing is a pivotal social skill that is an aspect of social understanding, as well as a foundational form of interaction for language. In studying the development of pointing it is possible to observe how infants develop the social skills required to convey meaning in human ways. Thus, this is an area in which to examine the nature and development of meaning, and an adequate conception of meaning is necessary for theories of language and cognition. We argue that dualist approaches have problems that can be avoided by adopting a relational worldview and the relational developmental systems framework that follows from it, which we suggest is a fruitful approach to theorizing about human development.

Yesandno, or acceptance and refusal, are widespread communicative skills that are common across cultures. Although nodding and shaking the head are common ways to express these seemingly simple responses, these gestures develop later than others such as pointing. We analyzed diary observations from eight infants to investigate the origins of these gestures, why they develop later than other early gestures, and why nodding the head to indicateyesdevelops later than shaking the head forno. We found that young infants were able to shake their heads side-to-side, but they did not use this movement to communicate refusals at first. Infants had difficulty learning the nodding movement, but they could perform the physical movement before using it to communicateyes. These gestures developed along different trajectories with shaking the head fornoemerging between 13 and 15 months and nodding foryesbetween 16 and 18 months.

Infants can extend their index fingers soon after birth, yet pointing gestures do not emerge until about 10 to 12 months. In the present study, we draw on the process-relational view, according to which pointing develops as infants learn how others respond to their initially non-communicative index finger use. We report on a longitudinal maternal diary study of 15 infants and describe four types of index finger use in the first year. Analysis of the observations suggests one possible developmental pathway: index finger extension becomes linked to infants’ attention around 7 to 9 months of age with the emergence of fingertip exploration and index finger extension towards out-of-reach objects infants wish to explore. Through parental responses infants begin to use index finger touch to refer in some situations, including asking and answering questions and to request, suggesting that some functions of pointing might originate in early index finger use.

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