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

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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.