Development of communicative gestures in normally developing children between 8 and 18 months: An exploratory study

Abstract

Children who have not developed speech tend to use gestures to communicate. Since gestures are not encouraged and suppressed in the Indian traditional context while speaking, this study focused on profiling the developing gestures in children to explore whether they use the gestures before development of speech. Eight normally developing 8-month-old children served as participants, who were followed up till the age of 18 months. Mother–child interactions were video-recorded and analyzed for deictic and representational gestures. The age of emergence and representational gestures in this study were relatively diverse from those in the Western studies; furthermore, representational gestures were unique and depended on the culture and mothers’ input.