A Training Targeting Caregivers’ Responsiveness Promotes Index-Finger Pointing in 12-Month-Old Infants

Katharina Kaletsch, Ulf Liszkowski

Index-finger pointing is a critical milestone for language development, thus requiring an account of its emergence. Empirical evidence indicates a correlation between caregivers’ responsiveness and infants’ pointing frequency, but a causal longitudinal relation has remained largely unexplored. The current study investigated whether a longitudinal training of caregivers’ responsiveness promotes infants’ index-finger pointing frequency. We collected data of 55 12-month-old German infants (28 females, from middle to high SES) and their caregivers at two timepoints using a recently established remote paradigm that reliably elicits pointing gestures within infant–caregiver interaction. Following baseline data collection, dyads were randomly assigned either to a training group (N=28) or a control group. In the training group, caregivers were informed about the benefits of being responsive and encouraged to respond multimodally (verbal + point) to their infants’ gestures during daily caregiver–infant interactions over a four-week period. Results were that caregivers in the training group demonstrated increased responsiveness following the training at t2. Further, at t2, infants in the training group pointed more frequently compared to infants in the control group. The training effect on infant pointing remained significant when controlling for cross-sectional and longitudinal relations. Findings show that a training focused on enhancing caregivers’ responsiveness in a German sample can foster infants’ early communicative development, highlighting the importance of caregiver responsiveness in the context of communicative development and early intervention.