Relation of infants' and mothers' pointing to infants' vocabulary measured directly and with parental reports

Sura Ertas; Sümeyye Koskulu; Ebru Ger; Ulf  Liszkowski; Aylin C. Kuntay

doi:10.1111/infa.12558

Relation of infants' and mothers' pointing to infants' vocabulary measured directly and with parental reports

Sura Ertas^*
, Sümeyye Koskulu
, Ebru Ger
, Ulf Liszkowski
, Aylin C. Kuntay

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Infants' and parents' pointing gestures predict infants' concurrent and prospective language development. Most studies have measured vocabulary size using parental reports. However, parents tend to underestimate or overestimate infants' vocabulary necessitating the use of direct measures alongside parent reports. The present study examined whether mothers' index-finger pointing, and infants' whole-hand and index-finger pointing at 14 months associate with infants' receptive and expressive vocabulary based on parental reports and directly measured lexical processing efficiency (LPE) concurrently at 14 months and prospectively at 18 months. We used the decorated room paradigm to measure pointing frequency, the Turkish communicative development inventory I to measure infants' receptive vocabulary, Turkish communicative development inventory II to measure their expressive vocabulary, and the Looking-While-Listening (LWL) task to measure LPE. At 14 months, 34 mother-infant dyads, and at 18 months, 30 dyads were included in the analyses. We found that only infants' index-finger pointing frequency at 14 months predicted their LPE (both reaction time and accuracy) prospectively at 18 months but not concurrently at 14 months. Neither maternal pointing nor infants' pointing predicted their receptive and expressive vocabulary based on indirect measurement. The results extend the evidence on the relation between index-finger pointing and language development to a more direct measure of vocabulary.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1007-1029
Number of pages	23
Journal	Infancy
Volume	28
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12558
Publication status	Published - 1 Nov 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Infancy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Congress of Infant Studies.

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK) to Aylin C. Küntay (grant number: 113K006) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to Ulf Liszkowski (grant number: 01DL14007). We are thankful to Aslı Aktan‐Erciyes and Tilbe Göksun for their valuable feedback and Hilal Şen, Merve Ataman, and Seda Akbıyık for their assistance in recruitment, data collection, and coding. We greatly appreciate the contribution of the parents and infants who participated in our study. The authors declare no conflicts of interest with regard to the funding source for this study.

Funders	Funder number
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung	01DL14007
Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu	113K006

Access to Document

10.1111/infa.12558Licence: CC BY

Infancy - 2023 - Ertaş - Relation of infants and mothers pointing to infants vocabulary measured directly and withFinal published version, 367 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

@article{d3b919351fe347d696416b2df4bfc9ba,

title = "Relation of infants' and mothers' pointing to infants' vocabulary measured directly and with parental reports",

abstract = "Infants' and parents' pointing gestures predict infants' concurrent and prospective language development. Most studies have measured vocabulary size using parental reports. However, parents tend to underestimate or overestimate infants' vocabulary necessitating the use of direct measures alongside parent reports. The present study examined whether mothers' index-finger pointing, and infants' whole-hand and index-finger pointing at 14 months associate with infants' receptive and expressive vocabulary based on parental reports and directly measured lexical processing efficiency (LPE) concurrently at 14 months and prospectively at 18 months. We used the decorated room paradigm to measure pointing frequency, the Turkish communicative development inventory I to measure infants' receptive vocabulary, Turkish communicative development inventory II to measure their expressive vocabulary, and the Looking-While-Listening (LWL) task to measure LPE. At 14 months, 34 mother-infant dyads, and at 18 months, 30 dyads were included in the analyses. We found that only infants' index-finger pointing frequency at 14 months predicted their LPE (both reaction time and accuracy) prospectively at 18 months but not concurrently at 14 months. Neither maternal pointing nor infants' pointing predicted their receptive and expressive vocabulary based on indirect measurement. The results extend the evidence on the relation between index-finger pointing and language development to a more direct measure of vocabulary.",

author = "Sura Ertas and S{\"u}meyye Koskulu and Ebru Ger and Ulf Liszkowski and \{C. Kuntay\}, Aylin",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Authors. Infancy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Congress of Infant Studies.",

year = "2023",

month = nov,

day = "1",

doi = "10.1111/infa.12558",

language = "English",

volume = "28",

pages = "1007--1029",

journal = "Infancy",

issn = "1525-0008",

publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",

number = "6",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Relation of infants' and mothers' pointing to infants' vocabulary measured directly and with parental reports

AU - Ertas, Sura

AU - Koskulu, Sümeyye

AU - Ger, Ebru

AU - Liszkowski, Ulf

AU - C. Kuntay, Aylin

PY - 2023/11/1

Y1 - 2023/11/1

N2 - Infants' and parents' pointing gestures predict infants' concurrent and prospective language development. Most studies have measured vocabulary size using parental reports. However, parents tend to underestimate or overestimate infants' vocabulary necessitating the use of direct measures alongside parent reports. The present study examined whether mothers' index-finger pointing, and infants' whole-hand and index-finger pointing at 14 months associate with infants' receptive and expressive vocabulary based on parental reports and directly measured lexical processing efficiency (LPE) concurrently at 14 months and prospectively at 18 months. We used the decorated room paradigm to measure pointing frequency, the Turkish communicative development inventory I to measure infants' receptive vocabulary, Turkish communicative development inventory II to measure their expressive vocabulary, and the Looking-While-Listening (LWL) task to measure LPE. At 14 months, 34 mother-infant dyads, and at 18 months, 30 dyads were included in the analyses. We found that only infants' index-finger pointing frequency at 14 months predicted their LPE (both reaction time and accuracy) prospectively at 18 months but not concurrently at 14 months. Neither maternal pointing nor infants' pointing predicted their receptive and expressive vocabulary based on indirect measurement. The results extend the evidence on the relation between index-finger pointing and language development to a more direct measure of vocabulary.

AB - Infants' and parents' pointing gestures predict infants' concurrent and prospective language development. Most studies have measured vocabulary size using parental reports. However, parents tend to underestimate or overestimate infants' vocabulary necessitating the use of direct measures alongside parent reports. The present study examined whether mothers' index-finger pointing, and infants' whole-hand and index-finger pointing at 14 months associate with infants' receptive and expressive vocabulary based on parental reports and directly measured lexical processing efficiency (LPE) concurrently at 14 months and prospectively at 18 months. We used the decorated room paradigm to measure pointing frequency, the Turkish communicative development inventory I to measure infants' receptive vocabulary, Turkish communicative development inventory II to measure their expressive vocabulary, and the Looking-While-Listening (LWL) task to measure LPE. At 14 months, 34 mother-infant dyads, and at 18 months, 30 dyads were included in the analyses. We found that only infants' index-finger pointing frequency at 14 months predicted their LPE (both reaction time and accuracy) prospectively at 18 months but not concurrently at 14 months. Neither maternal pointing nor infants' pointing predicted their receptive and expressive vocabulary based on indirect measurement. The results extend the evidence on the relation between index-finger pointing and language development to a more direct measure of vocabulary.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85169417850

U2 - 10.1111/infa.12558

DO - 10.1111/infa.12558

M3 - Article

SN - 1525-0008

VL - 28

SP - 1007

EP - 1029

JO - Infancy

JF - Infancy

IS - 6

ER -

Relation of infants' and mothers' pointing to infants' vocabulary measured directly and with parental reports

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this