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Updated: Mar 31, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
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Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

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Looking Behind vs. Front to Follow Points: The Longitudinal Link between Maternal Pointing and Infant Vocabulary

Sura Ertaş1,2, Ebru Ger3, Sümeyye Koşkulu-Sancar4

  • 1Department of Psychology, https://ror.org/00jzwgz36Koç University, Türkiye.

Journal of Child Language
|March 30, 2026
PubMed

The present study examined whether mothers' pointing and the interaction between maternal pointing and infants' point-following performance predict infants' receptive and expressive vocabulary. At each month from 8 to 12, Turkish-speaking mother-infant dyads (N = 56) participated in the decorated room paradigm to determine pointing frequency and the point-following paradigm to determine whether infants follow points to surrounding pictures. Receptive and expressive vocabulary was measured at 14 and 18 months, respectively, using the Turkish CDI. Infants' point-following performance at 11 months predicted their receptive vocabulary. Moreover, the interaction between maternal pointing and infant point-following at 12 months predicted receptive vocabulary, indicating that maternal pointing frequency predicted infants' receptive vocabulary only for advanced point-followers, not for visual-field point-followers. We found no significant association between maternal pointing or infants' point-following performance with expressive vocabulary. These findings suggest that infants' point-following performance plays a role in their early word learning during mother-infant interactions.

Keywords:
alıcı kelime dağarcığıanne işaret jestiexpressive vocabularyifade edici kelime dağarcığıiletişim gelişimiinfant communication developmentişaret takibimaternal pointingpoint-followingreceptive vocabulary

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