Gesturing is very important to children in their first couple years of life, because it helps them progress into verbal words. Without gesturing it would be difficult to remember or explain how they are feeling. Children increase their vocabulary through gestures at different rates due to many factors like how much the parent is involved or interacting with them during their daily routines. I will discuss the research on how important gestures are while developing language.

First, an article written by Ozcaliskan (2010), talked about the sex differences in language and how they are apparently different in the way children gesture. When children communicate, they first communicate using gestures before their first words. There are two types of gestures, deictic and conventional. First, deictic gestures are convey object information. An example of this would be a child pointing at a cookie to indicate it’s a cookie (Ozcaliskan, 2010). Iconic or conventional gestures are convey action information. An example of this would be moving your hand repeatedly to your more to convey eating, then extend an open palm next to a desired object which then indicates, that you want the object to be given to you (Ozcaliskan, 2010). If children are delayed in showing gestures then it also suggested that they will be delayed in producing verbal language as well.

Forty American children took place in an experiment, where parents were videotaped for 90 minutes every four months. They were told to interact with their children like they normally would whether it was feeding them, playing with them, or reading a book. There are three communicative acts. First, gesture only is pointing at a cookie without speech (Ozcaliskan, 2010). Next, speech only is actually saying the word “cookie.” Lastly, gesture+speech combinations would be saying “mommy” then pointing at a cookie (Ozcaliskan, 2010).

The results show that there were no differences between boys and girls with the number of gestures. Boys had a mean of 95.7 and girls had a mean of 111.9. The most common gesture was deictic. The standard deviation was 10.1 for boys and 10.7 for girls. Conventional gestures was 10.3 and girls were 10.5. Iconic gestures were very rare with 2 to 3% each. They say that boys lag behind girls in most early speech constructions. They found that boys lag behind argument+argument, argument+predicate, speech+speech combinations, and gesture+speech combinations. However, boys and girls are roughly the same in predicate+predicate combinations (Ozcaliskan, 2010). Hate to break it to you boys, but girls win! I also think boys fall behind in all these areas, because girls are more likely to engage in interactive play like having tea parties and boys are more likely to go outside and play.

Lastly, a huge question in the study was why do children’s earliest linguistic achievements appear in gesture rather than speech (Ozcaliskan, 2010). Well, there are three reasons they claim. First, it is shown to capture the first stages of cognitive skills in a variety of areas. Next, gestures are easier to produce than speech. Lastly, gestures may put fewer demands on working memory than speech (Ozcaliskan, 2010).

In the next study, LeBarton et al (2015), discussed the experiments show that an increase of early gestures also lead to an increase in spoken vocabulary. According to LeBarton et al (2015), they suggests that an early vocabulary helps in school success. Fifteen infants participated in the study. The children would be tested in their homes once a week for six weeks (LeBarton et al, 2015). The caregiver would have normal interactions with the child by feeding them, playing with them, and doing their typical day activities with them. Two weeks after the session was over, they got observed and had a caregiver-child interaction for a follow up. LeBarton et al (2015) study demonstrates that an increase in child gesture gives parents more opportunities to provide their children with targeted speech input. An example of this would be if a child points to a dog and would respond, “Yes that is a dog.” Researchers find this type of gesturing relates back to vocabulary.

Kirk and Lewis (2016) researched how gestures facilitates children’s creative thinking. Seventy-eight children ranging from nine through eleven participated in the experiment. Children were tested separately in school. They were shown images one by one and they were asked to generate as many novel uses of each item as they could with no time limit (Kirk & Lewis, 2016). The children were allowed to move their hands in one session and another session was gesture-restricted. The gestures were coded by using the Observer XT which is a computer-aided coding system (Kirk & Lewis, 2016). The coded all the iconic gestures which is known as gestures “that in form and manner of execution a meaning relevant to the simultaneously expressed linguistic meaning (Kirk & Lewis, 2016).” The iconic gestures were coded into five different categories which are, target-item-manipulation gestures, spatial gestures, body-part-as-object gestures, observer-viewpoint gestures, and other iconic gestures. Kirk and Lewis (2016) define target-item manipulation gestures as being performed in the first-person perspective and depicted the performance of an action on the target object. Spatial gestures are depicted spatial information that includes shape, size, or trajectory of movement (Kirk & Lewis, 2016). Body-part-as-object gestures are represented an object with hands (Kirk & Lewis, 2016). Observer-viewpoint gestures depicted information from a third-person perspective (Kirk & Lewis, 2016). Lastly, other iconic gestures depicted semantic information without including direct manipulations of the target item (Kirk & Lewis, 2016). Kirk and Lewis (2016) found that there was a significant correlation between children’s creative fluency and their gesture production. Also, when they tested again they found that gesturing had a significant boost on their creative ideas.

According to Stites and Ozcaliskan (2017), they state that children achieve increasingly complex language milestones initially in gesture or in gesture+speech combinations before they do in speech. The other studies I stated previously also agree with this. In this study, researchers ask to see if gesture continues to be a part of the language-learning process as children begin to develop more complex language skills (Stites & Ozcaliskan, 2017). Children indicate objects in gesture like pointing at a dog before the can produce verbal labels for these types of things. It is typical for children to point and gesture at objects for roughly three months before they start to produce the words for them and from there they increase their vocabulary. Children also use iconic gestures that convey actions such as flapping their arms to indicate bird flying (Stites & Ozcaliskan, 2017). Even after they start to produce words they will continue using this method along with speech to convey increasingly complex sentence-like meanings (Stites & Ozcaliskan, 2017). The key for narrative development is tracking story referents and they needed to figure out who did what to who (Stites & Ozcaliskan, 2017). Stites and Ozcaliskan (2017) ask children to track story referents through gestures by communication with gesture and speech and used character viewpoint in gesture to introduce new characters. According to the data, 4-6 year olds that were shown story referents, show gestures at an earlier age in life and they can gesture who did what to who (Stites & Ozcaliskan, 2017).

In Nicoladis, Marentette, and Navarro (2016), they claim that gesture frequency is linked primarily to story length in 4-10-year old children’s stories. In this study they tested the strength of narrative context: age, narrative complexity, and use of imagery (Nicoladis, Marenttete, & Navarro, 2016). All of the children were asked to watch the cartoons and then retell the story. According to the results, Nicoladis, Marentette, and Navarro (2016), showed that the length of the story was very significant to the predictor if the children’s gesture rate and it is strongly linked to activation of imagery. The results also showed that there is no significant differences between boys and girls in this study (Nicoladis, Marentette, & Navarro, 2016). The results also show that gesture is important for storytelling and helps hold information in visuo-spatial working memory (Nicoladis, Marentette & Navarro, 2016). However, this study suggests that they cannot disprove that there is a link between frequency and narrative complexity in the age range and the researchers argue that this link is weaker than the link between gesture frequency and activation of imagery (Nicoladis, Marentette & Navarro, 2016). Nicoladis, Marentette & Navarro (2016) says their argument would have to be supported more if the future results with a larger sample size and show similar results. In conclusion of this study, they show that children’s gesture is linked to the story they tell and the more they gesture the more they will be able to think, recollect thoughts, and tell a longer story (Nicoladis, Marentette & Navarro, 2016).

Overall, gesturing helps vocabulary development. Research suggests that girls learn vocabulary quicker than boys. Children increase their vocabulary at an early stage of their life and gesturing helps them achieve this. All the studies I talked about have positive effects on gesturing and how it improves vocabulary development. If you watch a baby or a child and see them pointing at something they are trying to indicate what that object is and when you tell them the object that is when they learn. Children pick up on these cues and gesturing is the very first steps in processing language and the development of it. If you know someone with a child who is not speaking yet, tell them not to be concerned since language first develops through gesturing and girls usually are the first to develop this.

References

LeBarton, E.S., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Raudenbush, S. (2015). Experimentally induced increases in early gesture lead to increases in spoken vocabulary. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16, 199–220.

Ozcaliskan, S. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2010). Sex differences in language appear in gesture. Developmental Science, 13, 752–760.

Kirk, E. & Lewis, C. (2016). Gesture Facilitates Children’s Creative Thinking. Psychological Science 28(2), 225-232.

Nicoladis, E., Marentette, P., Navarro, S. (2016). Gesture Frequency Linked Primarily to Story Length in 4-10- Year Old Children’s Stories. Psycholinguist Res, 45, 189-204.

Stites, J, L., Ozcaliskan, S. (2017). Who Did What to Whom? Children Track Story Referents First in Gesture. Psycholinguist Res, 46, 1019-1032.