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A predominant focus since the 1970s has been on the contribution of infant pointing to language development. In recent years, researchers have revisited the idea of ostensive gestures. As a precursor and predictor to pointing, ostensive gestures may hold the key to understanding the evolution of gestures to language (Cameron-Faulkner et al., 2015; Moreno-Núøez et al., 2020). Studying the development of showing and giving gestures can provide insights into the progression of infants' cognitive and social abilities. Infants typically show an increasing understanding and use of these gestures as they grow older. For example, they may initially use simple showing gestures, and later progress to more complex combinations of pointing gestures as they develop a better understanding of social interactions and sharing. Tracking these milestones helps researchers identify typical patterns of development and potential variations or delays in infants' social-cognitive skills. However, there has been a lack of longitudinal work assessing the developing relationship between shows, gives and points, and later language, and the contribution parents can offer during this time. Choi, Wei, and Rowe (2021) produced significant findings regarding the predictive value of different infant gestures on language development at various ages. Their study revealed that at 10 months of age, the combined use of infants’ show and give gestures was a stronger predictor of language skills at 18 months compared to pointing gestures. However, at 14 months, pointing gestures became a better predictor of language skills at 18 months than the combined use of show and give gestures. This suggests that the relative importance of these gestures in predicting language development changes over time. By 16 months, the researchers found that children's use of speech during interactions became the most significant predictor of their language skills at 18 months, surpassing the predictive power of gestures. This indicates that as children progress in their language development, deictic gesture becomes a more influential factor in predicting future language abilities. These findings highlight the dynamic nature of gesture use and its relationship with language development during infancy. Choi et al. highlight that it is worth considering that parental responsiveness to infants’ gestures could potentially play a role in explaining the relationships between these gesture types and later language development. The level of parental support, engagement, and interaction prompted by specific gestures may impact the child's language learning experiences. Therefore, understanding how parental responsiveness may differ across gesture types could provide insights into the mechanisms underlying the associations between gestures and language development in children. In contrast to an assumption in the literature, they found that parents produced significantly more contingent responses to combined use of show and give gestures than pointing gestures at 10-months-old. By assessing parental responsiveness to infants’ gestures in finer detail, we can tease apart which infant gestures in particular parents are more responsive too and how the quality of that interaction may contribute towards learning. Building on Choi et al’s work, we aim to investigate the ostensive and pointing gestures on a much finer level, whilst also taking into consideration the influence of parents' gestures and responsiveness. The division of ostensive gestures into discrete categories so to examine them as separate constructs is important in helping us understand infants’ early social and cognitive development, particularly their understanding of others' intentions. By differentiating between showing and giving gestures, researchers can analyse how infants use these actions to communicate and engage with others. For example, showing gestures imply that the infants recognize the presence of an object/event and want to draw attention to it, while giving gestures involve offering or presenting objects to others with the intention to share/transfer an object to someone else. Understanding how infants use these gestures allows us to explore their emerging social skills and their ability to share attention or communicate their needs. By distinguishing between the two forms of ostensive gestures (showing and giving), we may find that the presence of one gesture type is masking the influence of the other. For example, if we apply this notion to Choi et al’s finding regarding the significance of the combined use of show and give gestures, it may be that the presence of showing gestures is falsely inflating the true influence of giving gestures. In that sense, an overemphasis on giving gestures may interfere with language development, potentially due to the reduced opportunities for infants to engage in language-rich interactions. In analysing the gestural actions independently, we can tease apart and unmask the relative influence of showing and giving gestures on language development. Besides infant gesture, several studies highlight the importance of parental gestures in the development of language (Choi, Castelbaum, McKechnie, Rowe, Nelson, & Tager-Flusberg, 2021; Choi & Rowe, 2021; Choi, Shah, Rowe, Nelson, & Tager-Flusberg, 2021; Özçalışkan & Dimitrova, 2013; Salo, Reeb-Sutherland, Frenkel, Bowman, & Rowe, 2019). However, research often analyses the combined use of pointing gestures, such as the combined value of the two subtypes of declarative gestures – informative and expressive. Expressive points are utilised to convey an emotional reaction to a referent, such as surprise or fright, whereas informative points transmit information regarding an object or location that the partner may find interesting. Whilst they both place emphasis on sharing of information with a social partner, the intentions behind the actions are different. To support this notion of separation, earlier research has indicated that the utilization of declarative pointing by parents and infants can have distinct and interconnected influences on the language development of infants. Specifically, it has been found that expressive declarative points made by mothers have a distinct influence on the linguistic progress of their infants (Salo, Reeb-Sutherland, Frenkel, Bowman, & Rowe, 2019). In a regression model predicting infants' concurrent receptive vocabulary, the combined influence of mothers' expressive declarative points and infants' declarative pointing was examined. The results revealed that mothers' expressive declarative points were a significant predictor of infants' receptive vocabulary, even after considering the effect of infant declarative pointing. Additionally, the interaction between mothers' and infants' pointing was found to be significant. More specifically, it was observed that the positive relationship between mothers' expressive declarative pointing and infants' concurrent receptive language was evident only among infants who were also engaging in declarative pointing themselves. This highlights not only the importance of taking into consideration parental gestures in understanding the relationship between infant gesture and language, but also how intricate this relationship can be. In assessing parents’ gestures (both ostensive and deictic), we gain a clearer understanding of how parents modify their gestural communication to meet the communicative needs of their infants. It may be that they adapt their communication as their infant’s develop, whereas they may have set gestural styles that they maintain. Based on past literature, we predict that imperative points will not be predictive of language skills, but we do expect that the subgroup points of declarative gestures will be. Here, we will be testing two hypotheses. Firstly, if a more cognitive complex process is taking place, then informative gestures will be more predictive of language skills. However, if a more socio-effective model takes precedent, then expressive gestures would have more predictive of language skills. From past research, parents are also seen to modify their verbal and gestural communication when interacting with infants. Dimitrova & Moro (2013) found that parents vary the quantity and complexity of their gestures based on their perceived understanding of their infant’s own object knowledge with infant’s lack of object knowledge leads to caregivers’ actively reducing the complexity of their gestures to aid infant understanding. In Dimitrova & Moro’s original study, they assessed all occurrences of communicative gestures produced by caregivers, then coded these based on how supportive they were (highly supportive gestures, supportive gestures, and minimally supportive gestures). Here, we aim to apply a similar notion to pointing gestures to assess whether parents actively modify their pointing gestures and whether this changes dependant on the type of pointing gesture produced. Whilst Dimitrova & Moro’s (2013) work suggests that parents modify their gestures based on their infant’s knowledge, we are unsure of how parents modify their pointing gestures, in different types, namely imperative, expressive, and informative. To our knowledge, this will be the first study to outline possible trends in how parents vary the supportive nature of points. We hope to see a developmental change between 10-to-12-months-old and 13-to-14-months-old whereby parents modify how they utilise supportive gestures between these time points. For example, we may find that parents tend to utilise more highly supportive expressive gestures when their infant is 10- to- 12-months-old, which may subsequently reduce in quantity by the time their infant is 13- to- 14-months-old with supportive informative points taking precedent. By classifying all points based on supportiveness, we take one step further in gaining a clearer understanding of how parents utilise gestural communication to aid infant learning. Overall, this series of studies aims to give a comprehensive overview of the developmental trajectory of infant’s ostensive and deictic gestures between the ages of 10- and 14-months-old, whilst taking into consideration the gestural input from parents. By measuring the infant’s and parent’s ostensive and deictic gestures during semi-structured play sessions, we hope to glean a better understanding of the predictive value of different gestures on language development at various ages and understand whether parent’s behaviour is a moderating factor. Based on past literature and particularly Choi et al (2021), we expect to see a developmental trajectory with infant gestures. We expect that ostensive gestures will be the most prominent form of infant gesture at 10- to- 12-months-old with showing gestures being a stronger predictor of language skills at 18 months compared to giving and pointing gestures. However, at 14-months-old, pointing gestures will become a better predictor of language skills at 18-months-old than use of show and give gestures. We expect that parents will also produce a gestural trajectory, which incorporates showing (showing and demonstrating), giving, and pointing (imperative, informative, and expressive). These will vary in quantity (total) and quality (how supportive they are) and adjust over time to fit their infant’s own communicative abilities. These gestures will guide learning and provide models for their infants to learn from. For example, when their infants are younger, parents may use more expressive gestures to encourage fun play, then as their infant’s age, parents use of gestures may become more learning orientated with an increase in informative gestures. In summary, by taking into consideration the complex interplay between parental and infant gestures, and dividing ostensive gestures into showing and giving actions, it allows researchers to investigate infants' social communication and developmental milestones. This understanding contributes to our broader knowledge of early social and cognitive development in infants. References Cameron‐Faulkner, T., Theakston, A., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2015). The relationship between infant holdout and gives and pointing. Infancy, 20(5), 576-586. Choi, B., & Rowe, M. L. (2021). A parent gesture intervention as a means to increase parent declarative pointing and child vocabulary. Infancy, 26(5), 735-744. Choi, B., Castelbaum, L., McKechnie, R., Rowe, M. L., Nelson, C. A., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2021). Brief report: Parents’ declarative use of deictic gestures predict vocabulary development in infants at high and low risk for autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1-9. Choi, B., Shah, P., Rowe, M. L., Nelson, C. A., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2021). A longitudinal study of parent gestures, infant responsiveness, and vocabulary development in infants at risk for autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1-13. Choi, B., Wei, R., & Rowe, M. L. (2021). Show, give, and point gestures across infancy differentially predict language development. Developmental psychology, 57(6), 851. Moreno-Núñez, A., Rodríguez, C., & Miranda-Zapata, E. (2020). Getting away from the point: the emergence of ostensive gestures and their functions. Journal of child language, 47(3), 556-578. Özçalışkan, Ş., & Dimitrova, N. (2013, November). How gesture input provides a helping hand to language development. In Seminars in speech and language (Vol. 34, No. 04, pp. 227-236). Thieme Medical Publishers. Salo, V. C., Reeb-Sutherland, B., Frenkel, T. I., Bowman, L. C., & Rowe, M. L. (2019). Does intention matter? Relations between parent pointing, infant pointing, and developing language ability. Journal of Cognition and Development, 20(5), 635-655.

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