2 studies are presented that document the spontaneous development by normal infants of nonverbal gestures to symbolically represent objects, needs, states, and qualities. These symbolic gestures are shown to be a typical rather than rare phenomenon of early development and to function in ways similar to early verbal symbols. Indeed, the case is made that these gestures and early words are both representative of common underlying mechanisms, in particular, the recognition that things have names. In the first study, mothers of 38 17-month-old infants were interviewed in regard to their infants' verbal and nonverbal development. The second study, designed to document with greater precision the findings of the interview study, is a longitudinal study of 16 infants who were followed from 11 to 24 months. Both studies provide evidence that symbolic gestures tend to develop in tandem with the child's early words, that girls tend to rely more heavily than boys on such gestures, that structured parent-child interactions are important to the development of these gestures, that the gestures tend to depict the function rather than the form of objects, and that the use of gestural labels is positively related to verbal vocabulary development. Implications of these findings for theories of language development and for speech pathology are discussed.

No abstract

2 studies are presented that document the spontaneous development by normal infants of nonverbal gestures to symbolically represent objects, needs, states, and qualities. These symbolic gestures are shown to be a typical rather than rare phenomenon of early development and to function in ways similar to early verbal symbols. Indeed, the case is made that these gestures and early words are both representative of common underlying mechanisms, in particular, the recognition that things have names. In the first study, mothers of 38 17-month-old infants were interviewed in regard to their infants' verbal and nonverbal development. The second study, designed to document with greater precision the findings of the interview study, is a longitudinal study of 16 infants who were followed from 11 to 24 months. Both studies provide evidence that symbolic gestures tend to develop in tandem with the child's early words, that girls tend to rely more heavily than boys on such gestures, that structured parent-child interactions are important to the development of these gestures, that the gestures tend to depict the function rather than the form of objects, and that the use of gestural labels is positively related to verbal vocabulary development. Implications of these findings for theories of language development and for speech pathology are discussed.

The ability of 6-, 9-, and 11-month-olds to keep track of positions in space was assessed under four conditions varying the presence, salience, and location of landmark information. Each infant was trained to expect an event at one of two windows to either side. The infants were than rotated to the opposite side of the room, and the direction of search was interpreted as an indication of whether the event's location was being coded egocentrically or objectively. The results indicated high proportions of egocentricity at all ages in the absence of landmarks. In contrast, egocentricity decreased at all ages when stripes and lights surrounded the target site. However, whereas the 9-and 11-montholds switched to consistent objective responding in this condition, the 6-montholds glanced at both windows, indicating uncertainty as to which reference system should be used. Finally, only the 11-month-olds showed any evidence of being able to use landmark information presented at the irrelevant window.

and ACREDOLO, LINDA. Developmental Changes in Map-reading Skills. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 691-697. The ability of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children to infer the position of an object in a room from information contained on a map was assessed under 5 conditions: (a) map aligned inside the room (the pretest); (b) map aligned outside the room; (c) map rotated 180° inside the room; (d) map rotated 180° outside the room; and (e) map held vertically outside the room. The results indicated that children as young as 3 years could read a map aligned inside a room but that the ability to compensate for a rotated map did not develop until age 5. The position of the map inside or outside the room did not affect performance in either the ahgned or rotated conditions, with the exception that fewer egocentric errors were made in the rotated-outside condition than in the rotated-inside condition. The vertically held map was easily interpreted by most children who succeeded on the pretest, thus indicating that "up" and "down" are readily interchanged with "near" and "far." All the results are discussed in relation to a 2-component model of map reading.