The role of maternal gesturing in conversations with one-year-olds

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Abstract
This study explores the question of whether maternal gestures facilitate aspects of the linguistic or communicative behaviour of young children. Four children aged 1; 4 were videotaped playing with their mothers in an unconstrained free condition, and then again in an ungestured condition in which mothers were instructed not to use their hands while interacting with their children. Results from the two conditions of our study show that though children tended to produce attentive responses when they had observed a gesture, these reponses were not necessarily more appropriate to the interaction than responses not preceded by maternal gesture. We conclude that maternal gestures have more of a role in maintaining attention and the flow of interaction for young children than they do in providing specific cues to the grammar the child is acquiring.

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