Discover Magazine - Grandma Was Wrong: Gesturing Babies End Up With Better Vocabularies
This link-rich aggregator article reports on a study that was done on 14-month old babies from 50 families of varied socio-economic backgrounds. While there were no detectable differences in vocabulary at that age, there was almost a double amount of gesturing in the higher-status families compared to the lower ones. When the same children were tested at age 4 1/2, the gesturing children had a better vocabulary. There are at least a few possible explanations: that physical communication begins earlier than speech does and thus helps form concepts to be speech-ready or perhaps that gesturing offers more 'teaching moments' to parents/caretakers.
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