THE DEVELOPMENT OF REFERENTIAL COMMUNICATION IN INFANCY: AN ANALYSIS OF POINT , GRASP , AND SHOW

The ontogeny of three object-related gestures--point, grasp, and show--were examined in a longitudinal case study of two infants. A combination of microanalytic and qualitative methodologies were employed in describing the functions and morphology of these gestures, as well as their temporal and sequential organization with a number of infant and maternal behaviors. Throughout the dataset, these actions were found to co-occur at greater than chance levels with behaviors indicative of moderate infant arousal. They were found not to co-occur with behaviors indicative of high arousal. They did, however, tend to follow maternal behaviors serving to direct or maintain the infants\u27 attention. Relationships were observed between the direction of infants points and gaze; and a possible co-occurrence was observed between infant referential actions and specific infant vocalizations. Infant offers were typically embedded within repetitive, idiosyncratic, exploratory play routines which served to provide the infants with alternative visual perspectives on objects. This study demonstrated, then, that infant referential actions may be observed throughout the first year of life, and that they are systematically related to a range of maternal and infant behaviors. Structural and functional changes in these actions over the course of development can be described. These findings are consistent with heterochronic models of infant development, and suggest that communicative gestures emerge as a result of the interaction between elements of the infant\u27s cognitive, motivational, physiological, attentional, and social systems