These are the things you need to know about GESTURES

What is a gesture?

It is a mean of nonverbal communication appearing in prelinguistic stage (the stage before language emerge) with the use of the movement of body parts, this can include their legs or face.

Types of gestures: (Paul et al., 2018)

Gestures are categorized into two big groups: deictic and representational. types.

Deictic Gesture, aka 'pointing' means using their body to identify an area of interest.

e.g. A child points with her index finger extended at the cookie jar as a sign of wanting a cookie/ pointing at the piano as a sign of saying 'Look there!'

Representational Gesture: as the name suggests, the gesture represents something, it can be anything from an object, an animal, or even an event.

e.g. the child waves her hand as a way of saying hello to her friends./ The child moves her two arms in a circular motion while pretending as a choo choo train.

When do gestures appear? (Paul et al., 2018)

Gesture dominates between 10-12 months.

Between 12-18 months, kids combine gestures with word-like speech. Between 18-24 months, words start to emerge, and the combination of words and gestures is evident as well. e.g. kid says 'want' and looks at the ice-cream truck

As age increases, kids utilize gestures in more varied functions.

A deictic gesture is often the first to appear, at around 10-12 months, representational gesture appears around 10-24 months.

What does science say?

One study found that gesture use of developmentally delayed children of 2 years old is predictive of their later language abilities (Capone & McGregor, 2004).

The frequent use of pointing at 12 months old is shown positive for speech production and comprehension rates at 24 months old (Butterworth et al., 2013).

In children with autism spectrum disorder, the use of deictic gestures especially with the right-hand forecasts their vocabularies 1 year after, this theory is also valid among normally developing children (Dimitrova et al., 2020).

The use of gesture-word combinations prepares the transition from one-word to two-word speech in children (Özçalışkan et al., 2015).

Using gestures is an important primitive skill among infants and toddlers ----it creates communicative opportunities and prepares them for later language acquisition.

References:

Butterworth University of Sussex, George Butterworth, & Francesca Simion. (2013). The Development Of Sensory, Motor And Cognitive Capacities In Early Infancy: From Sensation To Cognition. Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203775936

Capone, N., & McGregor, K. (2004). Gesture Development: A Review for Clinical and Research Practices. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(1), 173–186. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2004/015)

Dimitrova, N., Mohr, C., Özçalışkan, Ş., & Adamson, L. (2020). Early Lateralization of Gestures in Autism: Right-Handed Points Predict Expressive Language. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 50(4), 1147–1158. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04347-9

Özçalışkan, Ş., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture is at the cutting edge of early language development. Cognition, 96(3), B101–B113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2005.01.001

Paul, R., Norbury, C., & Gosse, C. (2018). Language disorders from infancy through adolescence : listening, speaking, reading, writing, and communicating (Fifth edition.). Elsevier.

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Should there be limited use of gestures, limited use of a variety of gestures, or delay in gesture emergence timeline (as listed in 'When do gestures appear?'), this can be a red flag. Observe and identify milestones of other areas e.g. imitation, joining attention, babbling when determining if there is a developmental delay. If there is any suspicion of uncertainty, do not hesitate to seek your local speech pathology for a detailed and holistic assessment.

Hope you all have found this week's blog helpful.

Have a great weekend and don't forget to smile!

Joyce Lau