A cross-sectional study of referential looking and gestures in late infancy

Human infants gesture with gaze-alternating behaviour between distal objects and social partners by the end of infancy, but it has not been previously established that infants who gesture differ systematically in their visual behaviour from infants who don't gesture in the same experimental circumstances. In a study of 67 babies from 6 to 18 months of age, we report that (a) gestural production increased with age, (b) later-born babies were more likely to gesture than were first-born babies, (c) babies who gestured exhibited more referential looking, overall, than did babies who didn't gesture, (d) although babies who pointed with the index finger were not more likely to exhibit referential looking on the same trial in which they gestured, compared to babies who exhibited 'reaches', they did exhibit more referential looking overall, and (e) whole-hand extensions ('reaches') were directed usually towards social partners, whilst index-finger points were usually directed to an animated doll