The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between rhythmic movements and deictic gestures at the end of the first year of life, and to focus on their unimodal or multimodal character. We hypothesize that multimodal rhythmic movement performed with an object in the hand can facilitate the transition to the first deictic gestures. Twenty-three children were observed at 9 and 12 months of age in a naturalistic play situation with their mother or father. Results showed that rhythmic movements with objects in the hand are a frequent behavior in children's repertoires. Rhythmic behaviors tend to decrease from 9 to 12 months, specifically when they are unimodal. Multimodal rhythmic behavior production at 9 months is positively related with proximal deictic gestures 3 months later. Multimodal rhythmic movements are not directly related to distal deictic gestures, but are indirectly related via proximal deictic gestures. These results highlight the relevance of multimodal behaviors in the transition to the use of early gestures, and can be considered as a transitional phenomenon between the instrumental action and early communicative gestures.
The role of children’s verbal repetition of parents’ utterances on vocabulary growth has been well documented (Masur, 1999). Nevertheless, few studies have analyzed adults’ and children’s spontaneous verbal repetition around the second birthday distinguishing between the types of repetition. We analyzed longitudinally Spanish-speaking parent-child dyads during spontaneous interaction at 21, 24 and 30 months. Linguistic level was measured using the Spanish version of the MacArthur CDI (López-Ornat et al., 2005). Children’s and adults’ repetitions are about 17% of the speech. Children repeated adults’ utterances in a reduced manner whereas adults produced more extended repetitions. Adults’ rate of repetition predicted children’s linguistic level at 30 months. Children’s rate of repetition did not predict linguistic level. These results suggest that parents adapt their speech to children’s communicative abilities. Since children’s rate of repetition did not predict linguistic level, we suggest that verbal imitation plays an indirect and complex role in communicative development.
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