Maternal label and gesture use affects acquisition of specific object names

Abstract

Ten mothers were observed prospectively, interacting with their infants aged 0 ; 10 in two contexts (picture description and noun description). Maternal communicative behaviours were coded for volubility, gestural production and labelling style. Verbal labelling events were categorized into three exclusive categories: label only; label plus deictic gesture; label plus iconic gesture. We evaluated the predictive relations between maternal communicative style and children's subsequent acquisition of ten target nouns. Strong relations were observed between maternal communicative style and children's acquisition of the target nouns. Further, even controlling for maternal volubility and maternal labelling, maternal use of iconic gestures predicted the timing of acquisition of nouns in comprehension. These results support the proposition that maternal gestural input facilitates linguistic development, and suggest that such facilitation may be a function of gesture type.

Role of Maternal Gesture Use in Speech Use by Children With Fragile X Syndrome

“…Specifically, we examined whether children were more likely to respond with speech following different maternal gesture types. Past research has suggested that maternal gesture use helps to promote language outcomes (Goodwyn et al, 2000; Namy et al, 2000; Zammit & Schafer, 2011), and that children are more likely to respond with gestures and speech when mothers use gestures during communicative interactions (Iverson et al, 1999). Using gestures appears to help scaffold communicative interactions by providing children with more information about the spoken message, which in turn promotes comprehension (Capone & McGregor, 2004; Iverson et al, 1999; McNeil et al, 2000; Ninio & Bruner, 1978; Vygotsky, 1978).…”

“…Deictic gestures include pointing, showing, giving, and other gestures that are used to indicate the object or event that is the focus of the communicative interaction, such as tapping or touching an object (Bates, 1976; Iverson et al, 1999; Masur, 1990; O’Neill et al, 2005; Tfouni & Klatzky, 1983; Zammit & Schafer, 2011). The most common and important deictic gestures for communication are pointing gestures (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Ozçalişkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Tomasello, Carpenter, & Liszkowski, 2007; Tomasello, 1988) because a pointing gesture can help to direct child attention to the object or event that is the focus of the communicative interaction (Bates et al, 1975), thus, helping to maintain infant and child attention (Bangerter, 2004; Liszkowski, Carpenter, Henning, Striano, & Tomasello, 2004; Louwerse & Bangerter, 2010; Tomasello et al, 2007).…”

“…Further, pointing gestures are the most common gestures used by mothers during mother-child interactions (Iverson et al, 1999; O’Neill et al, 2005). Maternal pointing gestures help promote children’s understanding of speech because they help to clarify the verbal utterance (O’Neill et al, 2005) as evidenced by research on different aspects of child language comprehension (i.e., message comprehension [Schmidt, 1996], word comprehension [Morford & Goldin-Meadow, 1992; Tfouni & Klatzky, 1983], and acquisition of nouns [Gogate, Bahrick, & Watson, 2000; Moore, Angelopoulos, & Bennett, 1999; Schmidt, 1996; Zammit & Schafer, 2011]).…”

“…Specifically, we explored whether children with FXS were more likely to respond with speech to maternal utterances that included different types of gestures. Research on maternal gesture use and child language development has indicated that maternal gesture use helps to facilitate language development (Goodwyn, Acredolo, & Brown, 2000; Iverson, Capirci, Longobardi, & Caselli, 1999; McGregor & Capone, 2001; Namy, Acredolo, & Goodwyn, 2000; Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009; Zammit, & Schafer, 2011), which in turn increases the child’s gestural repertoire. Having a larger gestural repertoire and using gestures frequently in early language development helps children to reach language milestones earlier (Bates, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1975; Capirci et al, 1996; Folven & Bonvillian, 1991; Goodwyn et al, 2000; Morford & Goldin-Meadow, 1992).…”

Desenvolvimento lexical, alterações fonoaudiológicas e desempenho escolar: revisão de literatura

“…It is noteworthy that no articles describing the influence of the family environment and the importance of social relationships on the lexical acquisition and development were found, as well as the impacts on the child population, however, there are studies showing the importance of the parental communicative style and profile for the overall language development 25,26 .…”