I just saw an interesting article. It’s short so will post it here also.
“Don’t just talk to your toddler — gesture, too. Pointing, waving bye-bye and other natural gestures seem to boost a budding vocabulary.”
“Scientists found that those tots who could convey more meaning with gestures at age 14 months went on to have a richer vocabulary as they prepared to start kindergarten. And intriguingly, whether a family is poor or middle class plays a role, the researchers report today.”
“Anyone who’s ever watched a tot perform the arms-raised “pick me up now” demand knows that youngsters figure out how to communicate well before they can talk. Gesturing also seems to be an important precursor to forming sentences, as children start combining one word plus a gesture for a second word.”
“University of Chicago researchers wondered if gesturing also played a role in a serious problem: Children from low-income families start school with smaller vocabularies than better-off classmates. It’s a gap that tends to persist as students age. In fact, kindergarten vocabulary is a predictor of how well youngsters fare in school.”
“One big key to children’s vocabulary is how their parents talked to them from babyhood on. Previous research has shown that higher-income, better-educated parents tend to talk and read more to small children and to use more varied vocabulary and complex syntax.”
“Do those parents also gesture more as they talk with and teach their children? Yes, they do, researchers reported in the journal Science, and their children produce more gestures with meaning and have better vocabulary comprehension.”
