Thirty infants at 1;1 and their mothers were videotaped while playing for 18 minutes. Experimental stimuli were presented in three communicative intent contexts – proto-declarative, proto-imperative, and ambiguous – to elicit infant communicative bids that did and did not contain gestures. Mothers’ responses were analyzed, and their verbal responses were further coded as object labels, action labels, internal state labels, and nonlabeling utterances. Results demonstrated differential responses to infants’ gestural and nongestural bids. Mothers responded more often and were more likely to provide a verbal response in all contexts when infants’ communicative bids included gestures. They were also more likely to provide an object label and less likely to provide nonlabeling utterances to gestural than nongestural bids in the proto-declarative and ambiguous contexts. The privileged responses following infants’ gestures may serve as a mechanism for vocabulary acquisition.
AcredoloL.GoodwynS. (1988). Symbolic gesturing in normal infants. Child Development, 59, 450–466.
2.
AkhtarN.DunhamF.DunhamP. (1991). Directive interactions and early vocabulary development: The role of joint attentional focus. Journal of Child Language, 18, 41–49.
3.
BaldwinD.MarkmanE. (1989). Establishing word–object relations: A first step. Child Development, 60, 381–398.
4.
BatesE.BenigniL.BrethertonI.CamaioniL.VolterraV. (1979). The emergence of symbols: Cognition and communication in infancy. New York, NY: Academic Press.
5.
BaumwellL.Tamis-LeMondaC. S.BornsteinM. H. (1997). Maternal verbal sensitivity and child language comprehension. Infant Behavior & Development, 20, 247–258.
6.
BlakeJ.O’RourkeP.BorzellinoG. (1994). Form and function in the development of pointing and reaching gestures. Infant Behavior & Development, 17, 195–203.
7.
BlakeJ.VitaleG.OsborneP.OlshanskyE. (2005). A cross-cultural comparison of communicative gestures in human infants during the transition to language. Gesture, 5, 201–217.
8.
BloomL.MargulisC.TinkerE.FujitaN. (1996). Early conversations and word learning: Contributions from child and adult. Child Development, 67, 3154–3175.
9.
BornsteinM. H.Tamis-LeMondaC. S.HaynesM. (1999). First words in the second year: Continuity, stability, and models of concurrent and predictive correspondence in vocabulary and verbal responsiveness across age and context. Infant Behavior & Development, 22, 65–85.
10.
BrethertonI.BeeghlyM. (1982). Talking about internal states: The acquisition of an explicit theory of mind. Developmental Psychology, 18, 906–921.
11.
BrooksR.MeltzoffA. N. (2008). Infant gaze following and pointing predict accelerated vocabulary growth through two years of age: A longitudinal, growth curve modeling study. Journal of Child Language, 35, 207–220.
12.
CamaioniL.CastelliM. C.LongobardiE.VolterraV. (1991). A parent report instrument for early language assessment. First Language, 11, 345–359.
13.
CarpenterM.NagellK.TomaselloM. (1998). Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age [Monograph]. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 63(4, Serial No. 255), 1–174.
14.
CarpenterR.MastergeorgeA.CogginsT. (1983). The acquisition of communicative intentions in infants 8 to 15 months of age. Language and Speech, 26, 101–116.
15.
CraisE.DouglasD. D.CampbellC. C. (2004). The intersection of the development of gestures and intentionality. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, 678–694.
16.
DunnJ.BrownJ.SlomkowskiC.TeslaC.YoungbladeL. (1991). Young children’s understanding of other people’s feelings and beliefs: Individual differences and their antecedents. Child Development, 62, 1352–1366.
17.
FensonL.MarchmanV. A.ThalD.ReznickJ.BatesE. (2007). MacArthur communicative developmental inventories: User’s guide and technical manual (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.
18.
FilipiA. (2009). Toddler and parent interaction. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
19.
FrancoF.ButterworthG. (1996). Pointing and social awareness: Declaring and requesting in the second year. Journal of Child Language, 23, 307–336.
20.
GoldfieldB. A.ReznickJ. S. (1990). Early lexical acquisition: Rate, content, and the vocabulary spurt. Journal of Child Language, 17, 171–183.
21.
Goldin-MeadowS. (2002). Constructing communication by hand. Cognitive Development, 17, 1385–1405.
22.
Goldin-MeadowS. (2007). Pointing sets the stage for learning language and creating language. Child Development, 78, 741–745.
23.
Goldin-MeadowS.GoodrichW.SauerE.IversonJ. (2007). Young children use their hands to tell their mothers what to say. Developmental Science, 10, 778–785.
24.
Goldin-MeadowS.MorfordM. (1985). Gesture in early child language. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 31, 145–176.
25.
HardingC.GolinkoffR. (1979). The origins of intentional vocalizations in prelinguistic infants. Child Development, 50, 33–40.
26.
HenningA.StrianoT. (2011). Infant and maternal sensitivity to interpersonal timing. Child Development, 82, 916–931.
27.
HowellD. C. (1987). Statistical methods for psychology (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Duxbury.
28.
IversonJ.Goldin-MeadowS. (2005). Gesture paves the way for language development. Psychological Science, 16, 367–371.
29.
KellyS. D.ChurchR. B. (1998). A comparison between children’s and adults’ ability to detect conceptual information conveyed through representational gestures. Child Development, 69, 85–93.
30.
KellyS. D.IversonJ. M.TerranovaJ.NiegoJ.HopkinsM.GoldsmithL. (2002). Putting language back in the body: Speech and gesture on three developmental time frames. Developmental Neuropsychology, 22, 323–349.
31.
LiszkowskiU.CarpenterM.HenningA.StrianoT.TomaselloM. (2004). Twelve-month-olds point to share attention and interest. Developmental Science, 7, 297–307.
32.
MarcosH. (1991). How adults contribute to the development of early referential communication. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 6, 271–282.
33.
MarcosH.RyckebuschC.Rabain-JaminJ. (2003). Adult responses to young children’s communicative gestures: Joint achievement of speech acts. First Language, 23, 213–237.
34.
MasurE. F. (1982). Mothers’ responses to infants’ object-related gestures: Influences on lexical development. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 9, 23–30.
35.
MasurE. F. (1987). Imitative interchanges in a social context: Mother–infant matching behavior at the beginning of the second year. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 33, 453–472.
36.
MasurE. F.FlynnV.EichorstD. (2005). Maternal responsive and directive behaviours and utterances as predictors of children’s lexical development. Journal of Child Language, 32, 63–91.
37.
MasurE. F.OlsonJ. (2008). Mothers’ and infants’ responses to their partners’ spontaneous action and vocal/verbal imitation. Infant Behavior & Development, 31, 704–715.
38.
MeinsE.FernyhoughC.WainwrightR.GuptaM. D.FradleyE.TuckeyM. (2002). Maternal mind-mindedness and attachment security as predictors of theory of mind understanding. Child Development, 73, 1715–1726.
39.
NelsonK. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk [Monograph]. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 38(Serial No. 149), 1–2.
40.
OlsonJ.MasurE. F. (2011). Infants’ gestures influence mothers’ provision of object, action and internal state labels. Journal of Child Language, 38, 1028–1054.
41.
PepperJ.WeitzmanE. (2004). It Takes Two to Talk™: A practical guide for parents of children with language delay. Toronto, ON, Canada: The Hanen Centre.
42.
RollinsP. (2003). Caregivers’ contingent comments to 9-month-old infants: Relationships with later language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 221–234.
43.
RoweM. L.Goldin-MeadowS. (2009a). Differences in early gesture explain SES disparities in child vocabulary size at school entry. Science, 323, 951–953.
44.
RoweM. L.Goldin-MeadowS. (2009b). Early gesture selectively predicts later language learning. Developmental Science, 12, 182–187.
45.
SabbaghM.CallananM. (1998). Metarepresentation in action: 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds’ developing theories of mind in parent–child conversations. Developmental Psychology, 34, 491–502.
46.
SingerM. A.Goldin-MeadowS. (2005). Children learn when their teachers’ gestures and speech differ. Psychological Science, 16, 85–89.
47.
SlaughterV.PetersonC. C.CarpenterM. (2008). Maternal talk about mental states and the emergence of joint visual attention. Infancy, 13, 640–659.
48.
Tamis-LeMondaC. S.BornsteinM. H.BaumwellL. (2001). Maternal responsiveness and children’s achievement of language milestones. Child Development, 72, 748–767.
49.
TaumoepeauM.RuffmanT. (2006). Mother and infant talk about mental states relates to desire language and emotion understanding. Child Development, 77, 465–481.
50.
TaumoepeauM.RuffmanT. (2008). Stepping stones to others’ minds: Maternal talk relates to child mental state language and emotion understanding at 15, 24, and 33 months. Child Development, 79, 284–302.
51.
TomaselloM.CarpenterM.LiszkowskiU. (2007). A new look at infant pointing. Developmental Psychology, 78, 705–722.
52.
TomaselloM.FarrarM. (1986). Joint attention and early language. Child Development, 57, 1454–1463.
53.
WetherbyA.CainD.YonclasD.WalkerV. (1988). Analysis of intentional communication of normal children from the prelinguistic to the multiword stage. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 31, 240–252.
54.
YoderP. J.McCathrenR. B.WarrenS. F.WatsonA. L. (2001). Important distinctions in measuring maternal responses to communication in prelinguistic children with disabilities. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 22, 135–147.
55.
YoderP. J.WarrenS. (1998). Maternal responsivity predicts the prelinguistic communication intervention that facilitates generalized intentional communication. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 1207–1219.
