Pointing Entering the World of Communication Open Janea’s website with Internet Explorer

Declarative Pointing  Sharing attention to simply share experience with others  Contrasts with Imperative Pointing, which is done to obtain objects from others  Expression of shared intentionality, a critical foundation for communication  Unique to humans?  So far, apes do not seem to understand meaning behind human points. Cannot follow gesture to food.

Gestures as First Language  Bates et al., 1979  First noted the referential function of declarative pointing  Reported early onset to pointing  happens prior to first words

Gestures as First Language  Carpenter et al., 1998  Found that pointing develops in concert with other foundations for language, between 9-12 months  Such as Joint Attention

Gestures as First Language  Liszkowski, 2005  Reported that pointing is driven by motive to share interest AND affect  Child is not satisfied if adult doesn’t look to where they point, but also if they don’t express relevant attitude to the event

Pointing: A Truly Communicative Function  Liebal et al., 2007  Babies use shared experience to discern the meaning of the adult pointing gesture  Demonstrates keeping track of who you shared what with in interactions  Meaning of point disambiguated by the common ground you have with the other

Pointing Universal Across Culture --- Callaghan et al., 2010 Objects set up for pointing experiment in Peru You will see the same set up in the Canadian video you score

Lab Exercise  Part I: Data Collection  Watch the video and try to tally the number of index- finger points made by both the parent and the child  For the baby, you can count open-hand gestures that are not grasping, or “give me” gestures, as points  You can keep a tally on loose-leaf, and then later on your Exercise Sheet just type in the final number of Points you noted.

Lab Exercise  Part II: Data Analysis  Open the Excel file on Janea’s website  Test the correlation between frequency of parent points and frequency of child points. Instructions are on Exercise Sheet.  Remember:  Positive Correlation: As one goes up, the other goes up  Negative Correlation: As one goes up, the other goes down  The closer to either +1 or -1, the stronger the relationship  The closer to 0, the weaker the relationship  0 = no predictive relationship found  ( See Next Slide for more help with interpreting Correlations)

Correlations