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

在西方社会，典型的发育中的儿童在一岁左右开始指向事物，以提醒他们的照顾者注意它们（陈述性指向）并分享经验。对物体的共同注意和指向已经被证明与儿童的语言发展有关。虽然先前的研究表明，照顾者的干预风格在不同的文化社区中有很大的差异，尽管养育和儿童行为也有共性。到目前为止，人们一直认为指向是一种普遍现象。然而，情况可能是这样的，照顾者与儿童互动的方式的变化与儿童在文化社区中所指的频率、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，要么是没有很好的理解。我的研究项目将提供新的证据，在三个不同的文化社区，代表不同的社会文化概况，即农村和城市古吉拉特家庭在印度和欧美家庭在洛杉矶，加州的儿童指向行为的发展和频率的差异和相似性。该项目还对理解不同文化社区的自闭症谱系障碍具有影响，因为指向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.