Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:59:34.665Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mothers' labeling responses to infants' gestures predict vocabulary outcomes*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2015

JANET OLSON  and
ELISE FRANK MASUR
JANET OLSON*
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University, USA
ELISE FRANK MASUR
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Janet Olson, School of Allied Health and Communicative Disorders, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115; tel.: 815-753-1401; e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Twenty-nine infants aged 1;1 and their mothers were videotaped while interacting with toys for 18 minutes. Six experimental stimuli were presented to elicit infant communicative bids in two communicative intent contexts – proto-declarative and proto-imperative. Mothers' verbal responses to infants' gestural and non-gestural communicative bids were coded for object and action labels. Relations between maternal labeling responses and infants' vocabularies at 1;1 and 1;5 were examined. Mothers' labeling responses to infants' gestural communicative bids were concurrently and predictively related to infants' vocabularies, whereas responses to non-gestural communicative bids were not. Mothers' object labeling following gestures in the proto-declarative context mediated the association from infants' gesturing in the proto-declarative context to concurrent noun lexicons and was the strongest predictor of subsequent noun lexicons. Mothers' action labeling after infants' gestural bids in the proto-imperative context predicted infants' acquisition of action words at 1;5. Findings show that mothers' responsive labeling explain specific relations between infants' gestures and their vocabulary development.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 42 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 1289 - 1311
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

Portions of the results were presented at the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, April, 2013. The authors thank Emily Block and Grace Wybourn for assistance coding; Jihee Hong, Carrie Lloyd, Leigh Mangun, Sarah Nichols, Brittney Wyatt, and Trish Schnell for assistance collecting and managing data; and the participating children and mothers.

References

REFERENCES

Baldwin, D. (1991). Infants’ contribution to the achievement of joint reference. Child Development 62(5), 8758–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, R. M. & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51, 1173–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, E., Benigni, L., Bretherton, I., Camaioni, L. & Volterra, V. (1979). The emergence of symbols: cognition and communication in infancy. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Baumwell, L., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. & Bornstein, M. H. (1997). Maternal verbal sensitivity and child language comprehension. Infant Behavior and Development 20(2), 247–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blake, J., O'Rourke, P. & Borzellino, G. (1994). Form and function in the development of pointing and reaching gestures. Infant Behavior and Development 17, 195–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blake, J., Osborne, P., Cabral, M. & Gluck, P. (2003). The development of communicative gestures in Japanese infants. First Language 23, 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blake, J., Vitale, G., Osborne, P. & Olshansky, E. (2005). A cross-cultural comparison of communicative gestures in human infants during the transition to language. Gesture 5, 201–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornstein, M. H., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. & Haynes, M. (1999). First words in the second year: continuity, stability, and models of concurrent and predictive correspondence in vocabulary and verbal responsiveness across age and context. Infant Behavior and Development 22(1), 65–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brent, M. R. & Siskind, J. M. (2001). The role of exposure to isolated words in early vocabulary development. Cognition 81, B33–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brooks, R. & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Infant gaze following and pointing predict accelerated vocabulary growth through two years of age: a longitudinal, growth curve modeling study. Journal of Child Language 35, 207–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butterworth, G. E. (1998). What is special about pointing? In Simion, F. & Butterworth, G. E. (Eds.), The development of sensory motor and cognitive capacities in early infancy: from perception to cognition. Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Camaioni, L., Castelli, M. C., Longobardi, E. & Volterra, V. (1991). A parent report instrument for early language assessment. First Language 11, 345–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, R., Mastergeorge, A. & Coggins, T. (1983). The acquisition of communicative intentions in infants 8 to 15 months of age. Language and Speech 26(2), 101–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, M., Nagell, K. & Tomasello, M. (1998). Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial 255 63(4), 1–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colonnesi, C., Stams, G., Koster, I. & Noom, M. (2010). The relation between pointing and language development: a meta-analysis. Developmental Review 30, 352–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crais, E., Douglas, D. D. & Campbell, C. C. (2004). The intersection of the development of gestures and intentionality. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, 678–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fenson, L., Marchman, V. A., Thal, D., Reznick, J. & Bates, E. (2007). MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventories: user's guide and technical manual, 2nd ed.Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Franco, F. & Butterworth, G. (1996). Pointing and social awareness: declaring and requesting in the second year. Journal of Child Language 23, 307–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gershkoff-Stowe, L. (2002). Object naming, vocabulary growth, and the development of word retrieval abilities. Journal of Memory and Language 46, 665–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gershkoff-Stowe, L. & Hahn, E. R. (2007). Fast mapping skills in the developing lexicon. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50, 682–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Girolametto, L., Pearce, P. S. & Weitzman, E. (1996). Interactive focused stimulation for toddlers with expressive vocabulary delays. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 39, 1274–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldfield, B. A. & Reznick, J. S. (1990). Early lexical acquisition: rate, content, and the vocabulary spurt. Journal of Child Language 17(1), 171–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2002). Constructing communication by hand. Cognitive Development 17, 1385–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2007). Pointing sets the stage for learning language and creating language. Child Development 78(3), 741–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldin-Meadow, S., Goodrich, W., Sauer, E. & Iverson, J. (2007). Young children use their hands to tell their mothers what to say. Developmental Science 10(6), 778–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Morford, M. (1985). Gesture in early child language. Merrill Palmer Quarterly 31(2), 145–76.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Wagner, S. M. (2005). How our hands help us learn. Trends in Cognitive Science 9, 230–41.Google ScholarPubMed
Harding, C. & Golinkoff, R. (1979). The origins of intentional vocalizations in prelinguistic infants. Child Development 50(1), 33–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holmbeck, G. N. (1997). Toward terminological, conceptual, and statistical clarity in the study of mediator s and moderators: examples from child-clinical and pediatric psychology literatures. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 65(4), 599–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iverson, J. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture paves the way for language development. Psychological Science 16(5), 367–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Iverson, J. & Thelen, E. (1999). Hand, mouth and brain: the dynamic emergence of speech and gesture. Journal of Consciousness Studies 69(11), 19–40.Google Scholar
Leavens, D. & Hopkins, W. (1999). The whole-hand point: the structure and function of pointing from a comparative perspective. Journal of Comparative Psychology 113(4). 417–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., Henning, A., Striano, T. & Tomasello, M. (2004). Twelve-month-olds point to share attention and interest. Developmental Science 7(3), 297–307.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2008). Twelve-month-olds communicate helpfully and appropriately for knowledgeable and ignorant partners, Cognition 108(3), 732–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marcos, H. (1991). How adults contribute to the development of early referential communication. European Journal of Psychology of Education 6(3), 271–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcos, H., Ryckebusch, C. & Rabain-Jamin, J. (2003). Adult responses to young children's communicative gestures: joint achievement of speech acts. First Language 23(2), 213–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masur, E. F. (1982). Mothers' responses to infants’ object-related gestures: influences on lexical development. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 9, 23–30.Google ScholarPubMed
Masur, E. (1983). Gestural development, dual-directional signaling, and the transition to words. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 12(2), 93–109.Google Scholar
Masur, E. F. & Eichorst, D. L. (2002). Infants’ spontaneous imitation of novel versus familiar words: relations to observational and maternal report measures of their lexicons. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 48(4), 405–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masur, E. F., Flynn, V. & Eichorst, D. L. (2005). Maternal responsive and directive behaviours and utterances as predictors of children's lexical development. Journal of Child Language 32, 63–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McDuffie, A. & Yoder, P. (2010). Types of parent verbal responsiveness that predict language in young children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research 53, 1026–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mundy, P., Hogan, A. & Doehring, P. (1996). A preliminary manual for the abridged Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS). Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami.Google Scholar
Mundy, P., Sigman, M. & Kasari, C. (1990). A longitudinal study of joint attention and language development in autistic children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 20, 115–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, K. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development Serial 255, 38(1/2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, J. & Masur, E. F. (2011). Infants’ gestures influence mothers’ provision of object, action and internal state labels. Journal of Child Language 38, 1028–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olson, J. & Masur, E. F. (2013). Mothers respond differently to infants’ gestural versus nongestural communicative bids. First Language 33(4), 372–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Neill, D. K. (1996). Two-year-old children's sensitivity to a parent's knowledge state when making requests. Child Development 67, 659–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parlade, M. & Iverson, J. (2011). The interplay between language, gesture, and affect during communicative transition: a dynamic systems approach. Developmental Psychology 47(3), 820–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Puccini, D., Hassemer, M., Salomo, D. & Liszkowski, U. (2010). The type of shared activity shapes caregiver and infant communication. Gesture 10(2/3), 279–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rollins, P. (2003). Caregivers’ contingent comments to 9-month-old infants: relationships with later language. Applied Psycholinguistics 24, 221–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowe, M. L. (2000). Pointing and talk by low-income mothers and their 14-month-old children. First Language 20, 305–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowe, M. L. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2009). Early gesture selectively predicts later language learning. Developmental Science 12(1), 182–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rowe, M., Ozcaliskan, S. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2008). Learning words by hand: gesture's role in predicting vocabulary development. First Language 28(2), 182–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shumway, S. & Wetherby, A. (2009). Communicative acts of children with autism spectrum disorders in the second year of life. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52, 1139–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Slaughter, V.Peterson, C. C. & Carpenter, M. (2009). Maternal mental state talk and infants’ early gestural communication. Journal of Child Language 36, 1053–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. (2004). Do children acquire dense neighborhoods? An investigation of similarity neighborhoods in lexical acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics 25, 210–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Song, L.Leavell, A. S., Kahana-Kalman, R. & Yoshikawa, H. (2012). Ethnic differences in mother–infant language and gestural communications are associated with specific skills in infants. Developmental Science 15(3), 384–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taumoepeau, M. & Ruffman, T. (2008). Stepping stones to others' minds: maternal talk relates to child mental state language and emotion understanding at 15, 24, and 33 months. Child Development 79, 284–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1995). Pragmatic contexts for verb learning. In Tomasello, M. & Merriman, W. E., Beyond names for things, 115–46. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. & Farrar, M. (1986). Joint attention and early language. Child Development 57, 1454–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, L., Crais, E., Baranek, G., Dykstra, J. & Wilson, K. (2013). Communicative gesture use in infants with and without autism: a retrospective home video study. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 22, 25–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wetherby, A., Cain, D., Yonclas, D. & Walker, V. (1988). Analysis of intentional communication of normal children from the prelinguistic to the multiword stage. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 31(2), 240–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wetherby, A. & Prizant, B. (1993). Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales – Normed Edition. Chicago, IL: Applied Symbolix.Google Scholar
Yoder, P. J., McCathren, R. B., Warren, S. F. & Watson, A. L. (2001). Important distinctions in measuring maternal responses to communication in prelinguistic children with disabilities. Communication Disorders Quarterly 22(3), 135–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoder, P. J. & Warren, S. (1998). Maternal responsivity predicts the prelinguistic communication intervention that facilitates generalized intentional communication. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 41, 1207–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed