Abstract：
The emergence of the pointing gesture is a major developmental milestone in human infancy. Pointing fosters preverbal communication and is key for language and theory of mind development. Little is known about its ontogenetic origins and whether its pathway is similar across different cultures. The goal of this study was to examine the theoretical proposal that social pointing is preceded by a non-social use of the index finger and later becomes a social-communicative gesture. Moreover, the study investigated to which extent the emergence of social pointing differs cross-culturally. We assessed non-social index-finger use and social pointing in 647 infants aged 3- to 24 months from 4 different countries (China, Germany, Japan, and Türkiye). Non-social index-finger use and social pointing increased with infants\' age, such that social pointing became more dominant than non-social index-finger use with age. Whereas social pointing was reported across countries, its reported frequency differed between cultures with significantly greater social pointing frequency in infants from Türkiye, China, and Germany compared to Japanese infants. Our study supports theoretical proposals of the dominance of non-social index-finger use during early infancy with social pointing becoming more prominent as infants get older. These findings contribute to our understanding of infants\' use of their index finger for social and non-social purposes during the first two years of life.
摘要：
指向手势的出现是人类婴儿期的一个重要发展里程碑。指出促进前语言交流，是语言和心理发展理论的关键。人们对它的个体发育起源以及它的途径在不同文化中是否相似知之甚少。这项研究的目的是研究理论上的建议，即社会指向先于食指的非社会使用，然后成为社会交流手势。此外，这项研究调查了社会指向的出现在多大程度上跨文化差异。我们评估了来自4个不同国家的647名3至24个月的婴儿的非社会食指使用和社会指向（中国，德国,Japan,和图尔基耶）。非社会食指的使用和社会指向随着婴儿年龄的增长而增加，随着年龄的增长，社交指向比非社交食指使用更占主导地位。尽管各国都有社会指向的报道，其报告的频率在来自蒂尔基耶的婴儿中具有明显更大的社会指向频率的文化之间存在差异，中国,和德国相比，日本的婴儿。我们的研究支持在婴儿期早期使用非社会食指占主导地位的理论建议，随着婴儿年龄的增长，社会指向变得更加突出。这些发现有助于我们理解婴儿在生命的头两年将食指用于社会和非社会目的。
