The Association Between Pointing and Walking in Infants: A Longitudinal Observational Study

The relation between pointing and walking in infants was investigated through a 1-year observation study at a daycare center in Tokyo, Japan. The participants were 23 Japanese infants (mean age 13.1 months, 8 boys and 15 girls) from middle-SES families. Data from each infant were analyzed at 4 months before and after the onset of walking. It was shown that as infants develop locomotion, the frequency of pointing, the proportion of social pointing, and the proportion of social pointing accompanied by movement and looking behavior increase, while the proportion of pointing accompanied by prior interaction decreases. These changes were suggested to be more strongly associated with the acquisition of walking than with the infants' age itself. Furthermore, for pointing without prior interaction, it was shown that when pointing was combined with the infant's movement, it tended to increase the success of attentional sharing through pointing.