Edited book: Pointing : Culture, development, and evolution

Our book will be the first to integrate developmental, cultural and evolutionary perspectives on pointing. One of our major goals is to write and edit a book that is integrative and builds knowledge through recognizing the reality that pointing is not a single act that is defined by any one feature (e.g., the extension of an index finger). Rather, pointing is done flexibly through various motor actions, it requires capacities to jointly engage in the world, and it is a salient act that appears to be understood by a diversity of nonhuman species. Also, to this goal, we aim to reveal what we see as historical blind spots to research on pointing and joint visual attention. A wide-angle view and perspective on the functional properties of pointing requires that we consider how humans (not just WEIRD ones) and nonhumans use and understand it. In terms of our goal to integrate developmental, cultural, and evolutionary perspectives on pointing, the co-editors plan to write introductory and conclusion chapters for this book.

25 authors are contributing chapters