The relation between pointing and language development: A meta-analysis

The use of the pointing gesture is one of the first ways to communicate with the world. This gesture emerges before the second year of life and it is assumed to be the first form of intentional communication. This meta-analysis examined the concurrent and longitudinal relation between pointing and the emergence of language. Twenty-five studies were included into the meta-analysis, including 734 children. The role of several moderators was examined: pointing modality, pointing motive, age at which the pointing was measured, the assessment method of the pointing gesture and language development, the modality of language, SES, and country. The results showed both a concurrent (r = .52) and a longitudinal (r = .35) relation between pointing and language development. The relation between pointing and language development became stronger with age, and was found for pointing with a declarative and general motive, but not for pointing with an imperative motive. It is concluded that the pointing gesture is a key joint-attention behavior involved in the acquisition of language.     

Syntax and intentionality: An automatic link between language and theory-of-mind

Three studies provided evidence that syntax influences intentionality judgments. In Experiment 1, participants made either speeded or unspeeded intentionality judgments about ambiguously intentional subjects or objects. Participants were more likely to judge grammatical subjects as acting intentionally in the speeded relative to the reflective condition (thus showing an intentionality bias), but grammatical objects revealed the opposite pattern of results (thus showing an unintentionality bias). In Experiment 2, participants made an intentionality judgment about one of the two actors in a partially symmetric sentence (e.g., “John exchanged products with Susan”). The results revealed a tendency to treat the grammatical subject as acting more intentionally than the grammatical object. In Experiment 3 participants were encouraged to think about the events that such sentences typically refer to, and the tendency was significantly reduced. These results suggest a privileged relationship between language and central theory-of-mind concepts. More specifically, there may be two ways of determining intentionality judgments: (1) an automatic verbal bias to treat grammatical subjects (but not objects) as intentional (2) a deeper, more careful consideration of the events typically described by a sentence.     

The relation between infant freezing and the development of internalizing symptoms in adolescence: A prospective longitudinal study

Given the long‐lasting detrimental effects of internalizing symptoms, there is great need for detecting early risk markers. One promising marker is freezing behavior. Whereas initial freezing reactions are essential for coping with threat, prolonged freezing has been associated with internalizing psychopathology. However, it remains unknown whether early life alterations in freezing reactions predict changes in internalizing symptoms during adolescent development. In a longitudinal study (N = 116), we tested prospectively whether observed freezing in infancy predicted the development of internalizing symptoms from childhood through late adolescence (until age 17). Both longer and absent infant freezing behavior during a standard challenge (robot‐confrontation task) were associated with internalizing symptoms in adolescence. Specifically, absent infant freezing predicted a relative increase in internalizing symptoms consistently across development from relatively low symptom levels in childhood to relatively high levels in late adolescence. Longer infant freezing also predicted a relative increase in internalizing symptoms, but only up until early adolescence. This latter effect was moderated by peer stress and was followed by a later decrease in internalizing symptoms. The findings suggest that early deviations in defensive freezing responses signal risk for internalizing symptoms and may constitute important markers in future stress vulnerability and resilience studies.     

Interaction between verbal and gestural language in progressive aphasia: a longitudinal case study.

The objective of this longitudinal study is to investigate the on-line interaction between praxis and linguistic abilities in a progressive aphasia case. During 3 years of evolution, procedural discourse of a progressive aphasic patient was videotaped five times, allowing us to analyze the progression of both language and gestural production as well as the interaction between these two. We anticipated that, in the absence of apraxia, the patient would compensate for her speech deficit by producing progressively more and more meaningful gestures. Our compensatory hypothesis was confirmed but the compensation was not as efficient as one would expect given the absence of apraxia. With the progression of the speech deficit, the patient could not replace some verbs by pantomimes that were otherwise accompanying her discourse in the preceding testing sessions. We suggest that such a compensatory ability may constitute one important characteristic of the progressive aphasia syndrome.     

A longitudinal study of friendship development

At 3-week intervals during their first term at the university, 84 male and female freshman completed questionnaires regarding their relationships with two same-sex individuals whom they had just met. Results showed that dyads which successfully developed into close friendships by the end of the fall school term differed behaviorally and attitudinally from dyads that did not progress. As the friendships developed, the intimacy level of dyadic interaction accounted for an increasing percentage of the variance in ratings of friendship intensity beyond that accounted for by the sheer quantity of interaction. Ratings of relationship benefits were consistently positively correlated with friendship intensity and increased as the relationship progressed. There were no differences in ratings of relationship costs between close and nonclose friends. Dyadic behavior patterns and attitude ratings at the end of the fall school term were good predictors of friendship status 3 months later. Motivational and situational factors were also correlated with friendship outcomes.     

Exposure to media and theory-of-mind development in preschoolers

Exposure to different forms of narrative media may influence children's development of theory-of-mind. Because engagement with fictional narratives provides one with information about the social world, and possibly draws upon theory-of-mind processes during comprehension, exposure to storybooks, movies, and television may influence theory-of-mind development. We examined 4–6 year-olds’ inferred exposure to children's literature, television, and film, using an objective measure that controls for socially desirable responding. Theory-of-mind was assessed using a battery of five tasks. Controlling for age, gender, vocabulary, and parental income, inferred exposure to children's storybooks predicted theory-of-mind abilities. Inferred exposure to children's movies also predicted theory-of-mind development, but inferred exposure to children's television did not.     

Finding one's meaning: a test of the relation between quantifiers and integers in language development

We explored children’s early interpretation of numerals and linguistic number marking, in order to test the hypothesis (e.g., Carey (2004). Bootstrapping and the origin of concepts. Daedalus, 59-68) that children’s initial distinction between one and other numerals (i.e., two, three, etc.) is bootstrapped from a prior distinction between singular and plural nouns. Previous studies have presented evidence that in languages without singular-plural morphology, like Japanese and Chinese, children acquire the meaning of the word one later than in singular-plural languages like English and Russian. In two experiments, we sought to corroborate this relation between grammatical number and integer acquisition within English. We found a significant correlation between children’s comprehension of numerals and a large set of natural language quantifiers and determiners, even when controlling for effects due to age. However, we also found that 2-year-old children, who are just acquiring singular-plural morphology and the word one, fail to assign an exact interpretation to singular noun phrases (e.g., a banana), despite interpreting one as exact. For example, in a Truth-Value Judgment task, most children judged that a banana was consistent with a set of two objects, despite rejecting sets of two for the numeral one. Also, children who gave exactly one object for singular nouns did not have a better comprehension of numerals relative to children who did not give exactly one. Thus, we conclude that the correlation between quantifier comprehension and numeral comprehension in children of this age is not attributable to the singular-plural distinction facilitating the acquisition of the word one. We argue that quantifiers play a more general role in highlighting the semantic function of numerals, and that children distinguish between numerals and other quantifiers from the beginning, assigning exact interpretations only to numerals.     

Early oral language and later reading development in Spanish-speaking English language learners: Evidence from a nine-year longitudinal study

Using nationally-representative, longitudinal data on a cohort of Spanish-speaking English language learners in the U.S., this study investigated the extent to which early oral language proficiency in Spanish and English predicts later levels and rates of growth in English reading. Latent growth models indicated that both Spanish and English proficiency in kindergarten predicted levels of English reading in third through eighth grade, but that only English proficiency was uniquely predictive. English productive vocabulary was found to be a better predictor of later English reading than more complex measures, i.e., listening comprehension and story retell, contrary to findings for native English speakers. Oral language did not predict later growth rates. Findings suggest the need for educational efforts to develop oral language during early childhood for this underserved population. Findings further suggest that such early efforts may be necessary, but insufficient to accelerate ELLs' reading trajectories as they move into adolescence.     

Acquisition of mental state language in Spanish children: a longitudinal study of the relationship between the production of mental verbs and linguistic development

The development of language indicating the emergence of thinking about the thoughts of self and others has been scarcely studied in Spanish-speaking children. For this reason, we studied the development of mental state language and various indicators of language development in 25 Spanish-speaking children assessed at 3, 3 1/2, 4, 4 1/2, and 5 years of age. We coded and categorized the 40,250 utterances children produced during the five time points, 1202 (3.01%) of which had mental terms. In this sample, mental state language in Spanish children developed with a similar timeline and patterns as described in English-speaking children. However, several findings were novel for studies of mental state language. The general indexes of syntactic development did not correlate with the production of mental terms. The Index of Lexical Diversity was associated with the frequency of references to verbs of desire. The results of regression analyses suggest that not only the development of subordinate sentences with complement is associated with genuine mental references to desires and beliefs, but the development of lexical skills as well.     

The development of handedness and dichotic ear listening asymmetries in relation to school achievement: A longitudinal study

To assess the development of dichotic ear asymmetries and handedness, 208 male school children were evaluated in kindergarten and at Grades 2 and 5 (ages 66, 92, and 130 months of age, respectively) with a dichotic listening task and a hand preference test. The Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT) also was administered at each of the three grade levels. There was significant variability in handedness scores over time only for those subjects whose scores at initial testing, that is, in kindergarten, identified them as non-right-handers. Both right and left handers had a significant increase in dichotic listening scores over time; however, only right handers had a significant right ear advantage at each evaluation. Regression analyses showed that combined hand preference scores and ear recall scores at each probe when combined accounted for almost 44% of the variance in WRAT achievement scores at Grade 5. Ear asymmetry scores, however, were not predictive of school achievement.     

A longitudinal study of emotion expression and personality relations in early development.

To investigate emotion expression and personality relations, the authors coded infants' full-face and component positive and negative expressions during Episodes 4 through 8 of the strange situation procedure at age 18 months and obtained maternal ratings of the 5-factor model of personality when children were 3.5 years old. Full-face negative expression was directly related to Neuroticism and inversely related to Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. By contrast, component positive expression showed the exact opposite pattern of relations. Full-face positive expression was positively correlated with Extraversion and Openness to Experience. These findings indicate that full-face and component expressions may index different intensities of emotions. Emotion expression and personality relations were not mediated by the security of attachment continuum or the emotional reactivity dichotomy derived from the attachment subclassifications.     

A short-term longitudinal study of the early development of self-regulation

A short-term longitudinal study was conducted to determine whether self-regulation at 4 years could be predicted from child and maternal measures obtained when the children were age 24 months. The subjects were 69 children and their mothers drawn from the general community. Criterion behaviors assessed at 4 years were those suggestive of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Of the 24-month child measures, maternal ratings of the child's impulsivity and attention span, plus an objective measure of delay ability, were the most effective predictors. Maternal negativity, as assessed in mother-child interaction, predicted the criterion behaviors, even after the child's behavior as an elicitor of maternal behavior was controlled. Maternal child-rearing attitudes on the dimensions of warmth and aggravation were also effective predictors, even after controlling for the child's emotionality as a possible determinant of maternal attitudes. It is argued that the results with the maternal attitude measures provide support for the hypothesis that maternal behavior is a contributor to the development of self-regulation.This research was supported by a State of Ohio Academic Challenge Grant to the Bowling Green State University Clinical Psychology Program, and by a Basic Grant awarded to the first author by the Bowling Green State University Faculty Research Committee. The authors are grateful to Eric Dubow, Douglas Ullman, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and criticisms on previous versions of this article.     

A longitudinal study of the development of spatial conceptual ability

During October and November of 1983, three subsamples were selected from three schools in Mesa, Arizona: 34 students in 6th grade, 34 students in 8th grade, and 34 students in 10th grade. A battery of Piagetian-type tasks were individually and randomly administered to each subject. Seven tasks examined projective spatial conceptual abilities, and three tasks examined Euclidean abilities. The same battery of tasks was again administered to the same subjects during November and December of 1984 when all the subjects were in the next grade, that is, 7th, 9th, and 11th. Because of attrition, the number of students tested during the second year were 33, 30, and 28, respectively. To test for significant differences between grade levels, a chi-square one-sample procedure was used. Out of a possible 50 tasks, significant differences were detected in 36 (72%). Those findings, along with an examination of the percentage of students passing each task, support the notion of sequential development of spatial conceptual abilities.     

A longitudinal study of job loss in relation to the grief process

This study extended a previous assessment of the applicability of the grief process to job-loss, using a longitudinal sample. A sample of 38 unemployed men were interviewed shortly after job loss (t₁), and at four times over the following year (t₂–t₅), using a structured interview, a personal scaling technique [PQRST: Mulhall (1978), Manual for Personal Questionnaire Scaling Technique. NFER], and standard questionnaires of attachment to the former job, anxiety and depression. Of the sample, 24% fulfilled a criterion for a grief-like response at t₁. Factor analysis of the PQRST showed evidence for a general grief factor. A composite grief score from the interview was associated with two measures of job attachment (at t₁), and with questionnaire measures of depression and anxiety at t₁–t₁. There was a gradual decline over time in the grief reaction.     

The interest-major congruence and college success relation: A longitudinal study

The relation of interest-major congruence to indicators of college success was examined in an initial sample of 80, 574 individuals enrolled in 87 colleges. Both college achievement (GPA after 1 year, after 2 years and at graduation) as well as persistence (enrollment status after 1 year, after 2 years and graduation after 5 years) were used as criteria of college success. Two different representations of interest-major congruence were examined: Euclidean distance and angular agreement. The incremental validity of these two congruence indices above that of standardized academic skills tests (i.e., ACT scores) was examined for each of the six criteria using mixed level modeling so that institutional differences could be examined. Results indicated that both types of congruence were predictors of each of the GPA criteria regardless of institutional differences. However for the enrollment criteria, the overall level of interest scores was found to moderate the congruence-enrollment relation. Congruence for individuals with low overall interest level but not for individuals with high overall interest levels was predictive of persistence. Findings point to the importance of interest-major congruence in the college outcome process, but also highlight the complexity of the congruence-outcome relation.     

A retrospective longitudinal study of cognitive and language skills in poor reading comprehension

Fifty‐six specific poor reading comprehenders (SPRC) were selected in Grade 4 and retrospectively compared to good comprehenders at preschool (age 5) and at the end of kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2. The results revealed deficits in vocabulary, grammar, verbal memory and early deficits in phonological awareness in most of the SPRC sample, beginning in preschool. The reading comprehension deficits in children with SPRC were not as marked in earlier assessments in Grade 1 and 2, probably because of the greater dependence on word decoding in reading comprehension in the early grades.     

Breastfeeding and motor development: A longitudinal cohort study

BackgroundWhile there is a large body of work supporting the importance of early feeding practices on cognitive, immunity, behavioural and mental outcomes, few longitudinal studies have focused on motor development. The relationship between duration of breast feeding and motor development outcomes at 10, 14, and 17 years were examined.MethodsData were obtained from the Western Australian Pregnancy (Raine) Study. There were 2868 live births recorded and children were examined for motor proficiency at 10 (M = 10.54, SD = 2.27), 14 (M = 14.02, SD = 2.33) and 17 (M = 16.99, SD = 2.97) years using the McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development (MAND). Using linear mixed models, adjusted for covariates known to affect motor development, the influence of predominant breast feeding for <6 months and ⩾6 months on motor development outcomes was examined.ResultsBreast feeding for ⩾6 months was positively associated with improved motor development outcomes at 10, 14 and 17 years of age (p = 0.019, β 1.38) when adjusted for child’s sex, maternal age, alcohol intake, family income, hypertensive status, gestational stress and mode of delivery.ConclusionEarly life feeding practices have an influence on motor development outcomes into late childhood and adolescence independent of sociodemographic factors.     

The development of gaze following and its relation to language

We examined the ontogeny of gaze following by testing infants at 9, 10 and 11 months of age. Infants (N = 96) watched as an adult turned her head toward a target with either open or closed eyes. The 10- and 11-month-olds followed adult turns significantly more often in the open-eyes than the closed-eyes condition, but the 9-month-olds did not respond differentially. Although 9-month-olds may view others as 'body orienters', older infants begin to register whether others are 'visually connected' to the external world and, hence, understand adult looking in a new way. Results also showed a strong positive correlation between gaze-following behavior at 10-11 months and subsequent language scores at 18 months. Implications for social cognition are discussed in light of the developmental shift in gaze following between 9 and 11 months of age.