Specialized sign language is sometimes used to communicate with infants and toddlers. While infants and toddlers have a desire to communicate their needs and wishes, they lack the ability to do so clearly because the production of speech lags behind cognitive ability in the first months and years of life. Proponents of baby sign language say that this gap between desire to communicate and ability often leads to frustration and tantrums.[1][2] However, since hand–eye coordination develops sooner than acquisition of verbal skills, infants can learn simple signs for common words such as "eat", "sleep", "more", "hug", "play", "cookie", "teddy bear", before they are able to produce understandable speech.[3]
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In an article in the British Psychological Society's "The Psychologist" [4] Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon has considered in detail the theoretical bases behind the growth of this phenomenon and some of the claims made by its supporters [5]
As Doherty-Sneddon points out so-called "baby signing" is not entirely new. Variants have been used by speech and language therapists for decades with children who have speech and/or cognitive impairments (e.g. Clibbens et al., 2002 [6]). It is widely recognised that communication is at the heart of child development, be it cognitive, social, emotional or behavioural (e.g. Vygotsky, 1978 [7]).
While baby signing promoters claim various benefits verified in experimental research, there is in fact a dearth of actual research. The American team led by Acredolo and Goodwyn has been responsible for driving research into the effects of baby signing on child development. They claim babies readily acquire symbolic gestures when exposed to enhanced gesture training. They also propose (Acredolo et al., 1999,[8] Goodwyn et al., 2000 [9]) those taught to sign reap rewards such as:
The mechanisms underlying these benefits are proposed to include:
Doherty-Sneddon claims a key issue is ensuring that sufficient and appropriately designed research is available to back the claims made in relation to baby signing. A literature review concluded although benefits were reported in 13 of 17 studies, various methodological weaknesses leave the evidence unconfirmed.[10] Certainly, research into the effects of baby signing needs better control groups, such as children who are involved in equally interesting and fun activities based around adult and child language interaction but not baby signing.
Volterra et al. (2006) [11] conclude enhanced gesture input for hearing children is a catalyst for gesture acquisition, and especially the use of representational form and hence symbolic communicative function. They add this enhancement is short-lived (to between 12 and 15 months of age). Doherty-Sneddon argues, however, this timescale represents only a general norm. The enhancement and advantage is far more extended in the many toddlers who are not speaking until well after their second birthdays.
Doherty-Sneddon concludes by arguing there are three different levels of support for the benefits of baby signing:
Joseph Garcia, an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter and a leading proponent of use of ASL in communicating with infants and toddlers, began with his graduate thesis in 1986, an analysis of the role sign language could play in early childhood language acquisition. His research indicated babies who are exposed to signs regularly and consistently at six to seven months of age can begin using signs effectively by the eighth or ninth month.[12]
Research by Bonvillian & Folven indicates that children raised in a signing environment produce their first signs at a mean age of 8.2 months, whereas Capute et al. found a mean age of 11.3 months for the production of the first word in speaking children. This acquisition advantage has been found to extend to multi-word and multi-sign milestones as well. Signing children acquired 10 sign vocabularies at a mean age of 13.1 months, compared with 10 word vocabularies at a mean age of 15.1 months for speaking children. Milestones of 50 signs and 50 words were acquired at mean ages of 18 months and 19.6 months respectively.[13] [14]
Two-sign combinations were first produced at a mean age of 17.1 months, while two-word combinations were first produced between 18 and 24 months. Acquisition of morphology or inflection was not found to differ greatly between signing and speaking children.[15]
In 1998, a program was conducted at A. Sophie Rogers Infant-Toddler Laboratory School in Ohio State University by Kimberlee Whaley. Infants as young as 9 months old and their teachers began to learn to use some signs from the American Sign Language to communicate with each other. The program was not intended to teach American Sign Language, rather to use signs to communicate effectively. The program found that children would use the signs they learned in the classroom at home. Another finding indicated that girls use signs more than boys.[16]
Researchers have suggested the possibility of parents and experimenters being overly liberal in attributing sign or word status to early attempts at communication by children.[17] There is not a universal consensus on the criteria for differentiating a child's sign or word from a more simple gesture or vocalization. Large differences in acquisition arise when only signs that label objects rather than request objects are considered. In this case the mean age of first sign production becomes 12.6 months and is more comparable with the mean age of first word production in speaking children (11.3 months).[18]
It has also been found that children sometimes produce a combination of a pointing gesture and a spoken word earlier than they would produce a spoken two-word combination.[19] As not all studies are uniform in accepting or disqualifying pointing gestures as signs, this can also lead to discrepancies depending on how the research is carried out.
Additionally, two possible explanations have been suggested for the differences shown in language acquisition between speaking and signing children.[20]
Multiple Timing Mechanism
Under this theory, separate developmental mechanisms would control vocabulary and syntax development. Earlier maturation of the visual system as compared with the oral system would result in the first sign being easier to produce vs. the first word. This would also allow for the separate development of vocabulary and syntax.
Unitary Timing Mechanism
This developmental mechanism would be activated at the start of language learning and would result in a relatively fixed amount of time between language acquisition milestones. Alternatively, a unitary mechanism could activate at the same time in all children, irrespective of the onset of language learning. Environmental or peripheral factors, such as language modality or differences in a language's morphology and syntax could explain the differences between acquisition milestones in speaking and signing children.
Parents and caregivers can sign to babies beginning at birth (using signs for simple ideas like "milk" and "more"). Comprehension on the part of the baby can begin at six months, and the children can begin producing signs themselves around 10 months.
There have been studies to show that, even by increasing the use of gesture, not necessarily use of a signed language (such as ASL) can increase the richness of your child’s linguistic development and speed future processing. [21]
Advanced Gesture through Interaction with Parent[22] Goodwyn, Acredolo & Brown (2000) have investigated the effects of instructing parents to encourage gesture use on language development. There were three groups studied .The Gestural Training Group parents were given a set of 8 toys and told what gestures would be used with each toy. They were also encouraged to create gestures or use isolated ASL signs with their children; parents were presumably not native signers. The most interesting point seems to be that the Gestural Training Group may have small but reliable advantages in early language milestones other than age of the first word.
Studies have also been done to see what the affects of bilingual exposure can do to help in language acquisition and progress. This specific study was done with an Italian hearing child of deaf parents ; his name was Marco. [23][24] [25]
Hearing Children Exposed to Spoken & Signed Input Capirci et al. 1998, 2002 investigated the transition from gesture to sign in a case study of an Italian hearing bimodal bilingual child.
Marco was “a bilingual hearing child of deaf parents exposed to sign and spoken language from birth” Though both parents were deaf, they used both Italian Sign Language (LIS) and spoken Italian, at some times simultaneously. Marco was also regularly enrolled in a day care with Italian speaking peers. Gesture was considered anything that a hearing (Italian) monolingual child had also been observed producing, whereas LIS was only considered in use if it resembled an adult speakers LIS (and was still not comparable to common monolingual speakers’ gestures). Interesting Points:
Baby sign language was a plot element in the movie Meet the Fockers, where Jack (Robert De Niro's character) had taught his grandson "Little Jack" sign language. The twins that portrayed Little Jack (Bradley and Spencer Pickren) learned sign language from watching Signing Time! videos.[26]
