Why Do Children Use Gestures?

Long before a child begins to speak, he is already communicating with the world around him. From a very young age, a baby knows that a cry will draw a parent’s attention and that holding out his arms means “pick me up".

The motivation to point out and share aspects of the world with others seems to be a unique characteristic of human beings. In the months leading up to an infant's’ first birthday, the ability to demonstrate gestural communication can be discerned from pointing. Infant pointing is thought to be an important part of the prelinguistic period, preparing children for the emergence of language. A prerequisite for the production of pointing gestures is a shared experience between both the signaler and the recipient of the gesture, that is, a simultaneous engagement with the same external referent usually referred to as joint attention (Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998). The standard definition of joint attention according to Tomasello (1995) signifies deep mentalistic understanding from both parties. In other words, “two individuals know that they are attending to something in common,” (Tomasello, 1995, as cited in Racine, 2012, p.26). This may very well be the case when considering linguistic children and adults, however, is questionable when looking at prelinguistic infants who have yet to develop the

In both my infant and one’s class gesture is essential! I see it in every child. The toddlers in my field class uses their gestures to communicate with the teacher or caregivers because they do not how to fully form sentences or say words yet. In my one’s class, Ethan finished his breakfast and wanted more eggs so, he was making sounds to get the teachers attention and when the teacher looked at Ethan she asked, “Yes, Ethan?”. Ethan would then use his index finger and point to remaining pieces of his eggs on his plate and the teacher said, “Eggs? You want more Eggs Ethan? Ethan would nod and try to say eggs. In this situation, the gesture was his index finger and he was pointing with it. He wanted eggs and pointed to get the teachers attention.

On the other hand, in Howlett’s study, the parents were not randomly assigned to either the gesture group or the non-gesture group. Thereby, as he noted, the stress the parents experienced were not resulted from the gesture class but it was created because of the expectation these parents have from the class. Hence, there were a pre-existing difference between the parents who preferred to attend the gesture class and the ones who were not interested in the class, which could influence the result of the study. Nonetheless the gesture class did not reduce the level of stress. Mueller believed that the class strategies were responsible for this result, which means that because of the restrictive type of the class, parents felt pressure and consequently became more anxious. In the gesture class, parents learned a small number of signs and were obligated to teach all of them to their infants, while in Mueller’s studies, the parents learned a wide range of signs and were not under pressure to use all of them (Mueller, Sepulveda & Rodriguez, 2014).

Furthermore, based on their ability to distinguish the shared experiences with others, their ability to distinguish different shared experiences with others in real life situation can lead to further study. Additionally, the result of these two studies is consistent with the previous findings and moreover, the difference between the result of these two studies further emphasize the influence of age, memory and the complexity of the task in the infant’s understanding of the pointing gesture in a social context. This difference might due to the lower memory capacity of 14-months old infant in the performance of the complex task. Even though, this study highlights the role of the shared experience to the infant’s interpretation of the pointing gesture, the function of the shared experiences might depend on the infants’ understanding of the pointing gestures as an intentionally communicative cue to interpret the situation. However, there are many possible confounds in these two studies, especially the gaze of the experimenter can be an important cue to the infants’ understanding of the pointing gesture. Although the researchers eliminated the possibility for the infants to make an association between the presence

Verbal communication is a discipline that can be affected positively or negatively depending on many factors. Health problems like ear diseases or physical malformations can interrupt the language development in an infant (Otto, 2010). It is important to talk with children since they are babies, even knowing that babies cannot respond to us with words. Many parents talk and read to their babies before they are born. According to researchers babies start perceiving sound since they are in the mother’s womb (Otto, 2010, p. 96). By doing so, they can develop their sense of communication rapidly. Some people avoid doing baby talk to their babies. Babies have the tendency to imitate sounds and people around them; some parents believe that

They discovered an early social behavior to connect a baby’s ability to learn new language sound is called gaze shifting. Gaze shifting is when a baby makes eye contact at the same object as the other person such as a tutor. They did studies on infants with a tutor, and toys to measure how fast their brain can response and capable of doing. According to Brooks, infant gaze shifting serves as a building block for more complicated language and social skills. Researchers

To Wu and Gros-Louis (2014), infants enjoy a wealth of prelinguistic communication system prior to language development. As Igualada, Bosch and Prieto (2015) put it, infants may purposefully apply multimodal tactics to invigorate their communicative outputs, a behavior that appeals for common attention processes. Tomasello, Carpenter, and Liszkowski, (2007) consider the ability to apply pointing gestures as a patent and potent non-verbal tactic.Intention, attention and reaction by infant are the most noticeable strategy understandable to all walks of people from plebian through experts in the field of child development and learning.

Furthermore, the trajectory of babbling to the production of first words, are necessary components to the structure of language, and deaf infants have been observed to follow similar patterns of babbling at similar ages as hearing infants. It is also important that infants are exposed to language from birth, in that the critical period of language acquisition is a factor in language mastery. Therefore, it can be asserted that sign language is a definite language as opposed to a form of

Over the years, there has been a growing trend to teach infants sign language. There are DVDs, books, classes, etc. that show you how to teach signs to your baby. The programs and materials claim that teaching an infant sign language can help the baby better communicate his or her needs/wants, develop a closer bond with his or her caregiver, and also positively impact the development of the child’s language. Following the claims of these programs, Elizabeth Kirk and Neil Howlett (from the University of Hertfordshire) and Karen J. Pine and Ben (C) Fletcher (from the University of Hertfordshire and Istanbul Bilgi University) conducted two studies to see how gesturing (using sign language) to infants impacts language development and the relationship

Goldin-Meadow, S., & Iverson, J. M., (2005). Gesture Paves the Way for Language Development. Psychological Science (Wiley-Blackwell), 16(5), 367-371. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01542.x

A paired samples t test with an a of .05 was used to compare mean amount of eye contact between infants aged six months (M=7.25, SD = 1.909), and nine months (M = 8.75, SD = 2.053). On average, the amount of eye contact among infants aged nine months is higher than the six-months (M = 1.5, SD = 2.138), in this study. The mean difference was not statistically significant, t(7) = -1.984, p = .088, d = 0.76, two tails. (see figure 1)

According to the researchers at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, they stated that one of the best strategies for babies almost 10 months old to learn a new language than using a video or audio recording is by interacting with people. They discovered an early social behavior that can enhance a baby’s ability to learn new language sounds is called gaze shifting. Gaze shifting is when a baby makes eye movement to an object as the other person. According to Brooks, he addressed that the early social behavior, gaze shifting works as a building block when babies learn more complex language and social skills. Researchers testified the skill with a foreign language tutor and a baby using toys to measure how

Why people use gesture when they speak? People use gestures when they talk, but is this behavior learned from watching others move their hands when talking. When speaker talk, they gesture. The goal of this article is to understand the contribution that these gestures make to how we communicate and think. Gesture can play a role in communication and thought at many timespans. I explore, in turn, gesture’s contribution to how language is produced and understood in the moment; its contribution to how we learn language and other cognitive skills. I find that the gestures speakers produce when they talk are integral to communication and can be harnessed in a number of ways. Gesture provides building blocks that can be used to construct a language. By watching how children and adults who do

In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to define Silent Gesture (henceforth, SG), in the light of some of the broad features that are conventionally associated to language: compositionality and arbitrariness. While language cannot be limited to these characteristics, I believe they will help to clarify how the manual modality constricts SG and sets it apart from language.