Development of joint attention and declarative pointing in rural and urban Gujarati, Indian and Euro-American toddlers

在大约一岁的时候，西方社会中典型的发育中儿童开始指着东西来提醒他们的照顾者注意它们(声明性指向)并分享经验。研究表明，共同注意一个物体和指向与儿童的语言发展有关。尽管之前的研究表明，尽管父母养育和孩子行为也有共性，但照顾者的互动风格在不同的文化社区之间存在很大差异。到目前为止，人们一直认为，指点是如此普遍。然而，可能的情况是，照顾者与孩子互动的风格的变化与儿童在文化社区中的频率、开始和意义或解释有关。尽管指向和共同注意在发展中非常重要，但关于跨文化指向的发展证据目前要么是未知的，要么是没有得到很好的理解。我的研究项目将为三个代表不同社会文化特征的不同文化社区的儿童在发展和指向行为频率方面的差异和相似之处提供新的证据，这三个社区是印度的农村和城市古吉拉特家庭以及加利福尼亚州洛杉矶的欧美家庭。该项目还对理解不同文化社区中的自闭症谱系障碍有意义，因为指点已被用作诊断自闭症的早期指标。

At around one year of age, typically developing children in Western societies start pointing at things to alert their caregivers to them (declarative pointing) and share the experience. Joint attention to an object and pointing have been shown to be related to children’s language development. Although previous research has shown that caregivers’ interactional styles vary widely across cultural communities, although there are also universals of both parenting and child behaviors. It has been assumed thus far, that pointing is such a universal. It might be the case, however, that variability in caregivers’ style of interacting with a child is related to the frequency, onset, and meanings or interpretations with which children point within cultural communities. Even though pointing and joint attention are very significant in development, the developmental evidence on pointing cross-culturally is currently either unknown or not well understood. My research project will provide new evidence on the differences and similarities in the development and frequency of pointing behaviors of children in three different cultural communities that represent different socio-cultural profiles, namely rural and urban Gujarati families in India and Euro-American families in Los Angeles, California. The project also has implications for understanding autism spectrum disorders in different cultural communities, as pointing has been used as an early indicator to diagnose autism.