Mothers' responses to infants' object-related gestures: influences on lexical development
- 1 February 1982
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Child Language
- Vol. 9 (1) , 23-30
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900003585
Abstract
This paper examines four mothers' responses to three object-related gestures (pointing, extending objects, and open-handed reaching) by their first-born infants from 0; 9 to 1; 6, and the impact of their responses on the children's transition from gestural to verbal communication. Analysis revealed that the mothers responded differentially to their children's pointing gestures, reciprocating to a greater degree with labels of the indicated objects. The children, in turn, produced more object-labelling words with pointing than with other gestures. In addition, the mothers' labelling responses to pointing significantly predicted the extent of their children's object-naming vocabularies.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- From communication to language—a psychological perspectivePublished by Elsevier ,2002
- Mothers' speech to children and syntactic development: some simple relationshipsJournal of Child Language, 1979
- The achievement and antecedents of labellingJournal of Child Language, 1978
- Structure and Strategy in Learning to TalkMonographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1973