Transcript Slide 1

Goodwyn, Susan, Linda Acredolo, Catherine Brown. (2000). Impact of Symbolic
Gesturing on Early Language Development. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 24(2), pp.
81-103.
Research Question: What is the impact of gesturing as it relates to
infant development, particularly verbal language development?
Participants: 103 infants: 11 months old +/- 1 week.
•Experimental group [ST] (19 boys, 13 girls) received training and followup with modeling gesturing.
•Non-intervention Control group (22 boys, 17 girls)
•Verbal Training group [VT] (17 boys, 15 girls) received training just with
modeling target words.
Baseline measures taken for demographics, mother-reported vocabulary,
and observed vocabulary. No significant differences found.
Phone interviews were made and recorded/coded every other week for
parents to detail their efforts.
Children were tested in the lab at 11, 15,19, 24, 30, and 36 months
Findings
The VT group did not outperform the ST group on any measure
At every level of analysis, an advantage is shown for children
encouraged to use symbolic gestures in their early communication
repertoires
Critique
+This is the first study in this domain with a control group that
There are increases in infant-directed speech toward infants who are received comparable training.
using gestures; also, gesturing increases infant-controlled speech
+Breadth of measures/tasks; scope of data/feedback
Symbolic gesturing scaffolds language development at a few different
-Homogeneity of subject. Also, the CT group was probably
levels: holistic, interactive, symbolic.
Articulation, rather than conceptual knowledge, is the hurdle for
communication.
engaging in nearly as much labeling as the VT group simply as a
function of parenting
-Benefits seem to taper off by 36 months, so really more to allay
parent/child frustration than for long-term gains