Baby signing is said to increase IQ by 10 - 12 points and
the child is more likely to speak earlier, have a larger vocabulary, are
better readers, have a closer bond with their parents and do better at
school as a consequence.
Below are some extracts from some
leading experts:
"Being able to communicate is a
fundamentally important part of human development. Baby signing builds upon
the natural use of gesture and other nonverbal signals by preverbal infants,
greatly enhancing their communication repertoire. Without spoken or sign
language, children's communication is pretty much restricted to the
immediate here and now, for example being able to point at what they want.
Once they can speak or sign they are able to tell us about their past
experiences, future desires, thoughts and feelings."
- Dr. Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon,
Senior Lecturer, University of Stirling
"New research demonstrates that teaching sign language to
hearing babies improves their language, vocabulary, and reading skills as
they develop." Kristin Snoddon Article in WFD News, May 2000, Vol. 13
No. 1
Article taken from The Times
February 13, 2009 Written by Times Science Editor, Mark Henderson
"Gesture effect" points to head start for toddlers
Parents who point and use other gestures with their toddlers can give
them a head start with learning language, scientists have discovered.
New research in the United States has revealed that young children who pick
up gestures from their parents at 14 months have larger and more complex
vocabularies when they start school.
As well-educated parents from higher income brackets use more gestures with
their babies, the findings help to explain why children from these families
develop speech more quickly than those born into lower socio-economic
groups.
The gesture effect may also have a lasting influence on children’s
intellectual development, because a child’s vocabulary at the start of
school is a strong predictor of later academic success.
Meredith Rowe, of the University of Chicago, who conducted the research with
her colleague Susan Goldin-Meadow, said the results suggested that parents
should be encouraged to point and use their hands when interacting with
their children.
“If there is any way to encourage children to gesture to things more before
they can speak, that could be useful,” she said. “Talk to your children
more, gesture more.” Details of the research were presented yesterday at the
American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago,
and are published in the journal Science.
While it was already known that children whose parents talk to them more as
toddlers develop language more quickly, the new research is the first to
suggest that parental gestures are also important.
The reason may be that by learning to point at things, children become
better at connecting words to objects. “Child gesture could play an indirect
role in word learning by eliciting timely speech from parents,” the
scientists wrote in their paper. “For example, in response to her child’s
point at the doll, mother might say, ’yes, that’s a doll,’ thus providing a
word for the object that is the focus of the child’s attention.” In the
study, the Chicago team videotaped 50 families from different socio-economic
groups for 90-minute sessions, all of whom had a toddler aged 14 months.
They recorded details of how often both children and their parents spoke and
used gestures.
Children from higher income families used gestures to convey an average of
24 different meanings over 90 minutes, while those from less privileged
socio-economic groups conveyed only 13 meanings. This was attributable to
greater parental use of gesture.
All the children were then assessed again at the age of four and a half (54
months), when they were starting school. The
children who had gestured more at the age of 14 months had significantly
bigger vocabularies.
Differences between children’s gestures were obvious at 14 months, even
though children at that age showed no clear differences in vocabulary or
speech.
“At 14 months of age, children are in the very early stages of productive
language, they are saying very few words,” Dr Rowe said. “We didn’t see any
differences in their spoken language but we did see difference in their
gestures.
“It is striking that, in the initial stages of language learning when social
economic status differences in children’s spoken vocabulary are not yet
evident, we see social economic status differences in child gesture use.
“Children typically do not begin gesturing until around 10 months. Thus,
social economic status differences are evident at a mere four months, and
possibly even sooner, after the onset of child gesture production.” Dr Goldin-Meadow said the gesture effect could have a long-lasting effect on
children’s development. “Vocabulary is a key predictor of school success and
is a primary reason why children from low-income families enter school at a
greater risk of failure than their peers from advantaged families,” she
said.
© 2009 Tracy Baker Singalong
Baby Sign
