Form and function in the development of pointing and reaching gestures

Blake, Joanna; O'Rourke, Paula; Borzellino, G.

doi:10.1016/0163-6383(94)90055-8

Cited by 104 publications

(114 citation statements)

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“…Previous findings have not reported any strengthening of the right-sided asymmetry for pointing gestures between 13 and 28 months of age (Bates et al, 1986), between 10 and 40 months of age (Vauclair & Imbault, 2009), and between 12 and 38 months of age (Cochet & Vauclair, 2010a). By contrast, the degree of right-hand preference was found to augment between prepointing produced at 8 months of age and later pointing produced at 15 months (Young et al, 1985) and 12 months of age (Blake et al, 1994), likely reflecting an increasing involvement of the left cerebral hemisphere in the production of communicative gestures. Altogether, these results suggest that the right-sided asymmetry for communicative gestures is already strongly established by approximately 1 year of age.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…This result suggests a tight interconnection in the left cerebral hemisphere between speech and communicative gestures, and this is especially true for declarative pointing, which is usually regarded as more closely related to speech development (e.g., Blake, Vitale, Osborne, & Olshansky, 2005;Camaioni et al, 2004;Cochet & Vauclair, 2010a). Moreover, the increase in the degree of hand preference for pointing reported toward the end of the first year (Blake et al, 1994;Young et al, 1985) might be associated with another important step in speech development that demands a high mobilization of left hemisphere resources, namely the production of the very first words.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…A right-sided asymmetry especially for pointing gestures has been reported in several studies (Bates et al, 1986;Blake, O'Rourke, & Borzellino, 1994;Vauclair & Imbault, 2009;Young, Lock, & Service, 1985). Moreover, Esseily et al (2011) showed that right-handed infants for pointing understood and produced more words than non-right-handed infants, and Vauclair and Cochet (2010) observed a U-shaped relationship in toddlers between 12 and 30 months of age between the degree of hand preference for pointing and the developmental quotient for language.…”

Section: Handedness For Pointing and Language Developmentmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…A bimanual manipulation task and two pointing tasks were administered, with the order of presentation alternated across participants. The two pointing tasks were designed to induce imperative and declarative pointing, respectively, based on earlier studies (Liszkowski et al, 2009; see also Blake et al, 1994, for a description of indicative and request situations). To avoid postural biases, data were recorded only when the child was in a symmetrical position with both hands initially free.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Hand preference for pointing gestures and bimanual manipulation around the vocabulary spurt period

Cochet

Jover

Vauclair

2011

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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a b s t r a c tThis study investigated the development of hand preference for bimanual manipulative activities and pointing gestures in toddlers observed longitudinally over a 5-month period, in relation to language acquisition. The lexical spurt was found to be accompanied by an increase in the right-sided bias for pointing but not for manipulation. Moreover, results revealed a significant correlation between hand preference for imperative pointing gestures and manipulative activities in children who did not experience the lexical spurt during the observational period. By contrast, measures of handedness for declarative pointing were never correlated with those of handedness for manipulation. This study illustrates the complex relationship between handedness and language development and emphasizes the need to take the different functions of pointing gestures into account.Ó 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. IntroductionA small body of research has described the development of hand preference in relation to language development, although this topic represents a significant source of information for assessing developmental changes of these two main functional asymmetries. Because the use of one hand for a specific activity mostly reflects the predominant involvement of the contralateral hemisphere, this measure provides an innovative means for investigating its relations with the cerebral control of speech during development. Moreover, different measurements of handedness may allow us to determine whether manipulative activities and communicative gestures are linked to speech at varying degrees. In the Contents lists available at ScienceDirectJournal of Experimental Child Psychology jo urnal homepage: www.elsevier.co m/locate/jecp current study, language level and hand preference for both bimanual manipulation and pointing gestures were measured longitudinally in toddlers between 13 and 21 months of age in an attempt to unravel the complex relationships between language acquisition and the development of handedness. We focused on a key period of language development, namely the lexical spurt, whose onset was expected to be more closely linked to hand preference for pointing than to handedness for noncommunicative actions in the course of development. Moreover, speech-gesture relationships were expected to vary depending on the function served by pointing gestures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Handedness For Pointing and Language Developmentmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Hand preference for pointing gestures and bimanual manipulation around the vocabulary spurt period

Cochet

Jover

Vauclair

2011

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…From a structural standpoint, pointing in humans may involve an extended index finger with full arm extension or may be as subtle as a slight raise of the chin and a glance. Following Blake, O'Rourke, and Borzellino (1994), we argue that "the essence of pointing lies in its function, which is referential communication, and not in mere index finger extension" (p. 202). We focus here on pointing with extended fingers to distal objects, with the putative goal of directing the attention of an observer to those distal objects.…”

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confidence: 99%

Indexical and referential pointing in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Leavens

Hopkins

Bard³

1996

Journal of Comparative Psychology

205

215

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The spontaneous index finger and other referential pointing in 3 adult, laboratory chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) who have not received language training is reported. Of 256 total observed points, 254 were emitted in the presence of a human to objects in the environment; therefore, the points were communicative. Indicators of intentional communication used by the subjects included attention-getting behaviors, gaze alternation, and persistence until reward. Thus, pointing by these chimpanzees was intentionally communicative. These data imply that perspective-taking and referential communication are generalized hominoid traits, given appropriate eliciting contexts. Index finger pointing was more frequent with the subjects' dominant hands. This study refutes claims that indexical or referential pointing is species-unique to humans or dependent on linguistic competence or explicit training.This study was initiated when a chimpanzee began to regularly point to accidentally dropped food items outside his home cage and beyond his reach in the presence of an experimenter. We sought to determine if this pointing behavior could be defined as intentional communication, and not simple reaching, by comparing the pointing behavior of this subject and two cagemates with pointing and intentional communication in human infants.The production and comprehension of referential pointing in preverbal humans have been increasingly studied in recent decades with respect to their significance for the attribution of intentionality in preverbal children

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Development of hand preference for object‐directed actions and pointing gestures: A longitudinal study between 15 and 25 months of age

Cochet

2011

Developmental Psychobiology

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The development of hand preferences for object-directed actions and pointing gestures was investigated in toddlers sampled bimonthly between 15 and 25 months of age. Language level was also assessed, in an attempt to examine the relationship between handedness and language development. Results did not reveal any changes over the study period in the mean Handedness Index of the whole sample, both for bimanual manipulative activities and pointing gestures. However, the categorization of participants as left-handers, right-handers, or non-lateralized revealed that most of children presented nonlinear individual trajectories in the development of hand preference. Moreover, the only significant correlations observed between hand preferences for manipulation and pointing were negative correlations between the strength of hand preferences at 19 and 21 months of age, suggesting that manipulative actions and communicative gestures are controlled by different networks in the left cerebral hemisphere. These findings are discussed in relation to the development of speech-gesture links in infancy.

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Form and function in the development of pointing and reaching gestures

Cited by 104 publications

References 5 publications

Hand preference for pointing gestures and bimanual manipulation around the vocabulary spurt period

Hand preference for pointing gestures and bimanual manipulation around the vocabulary spurt period

Indexical and referential pointing in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Development of hand preference for object‐directed actions and pointing gestures: A longitudinal study between 15 and 25 months of age

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