Do Parents Model Gestures Differently When Children's Gestures Differ?
Şeyda Özçalışkan, Lauren B Adamson, Nevena Dimitrova and 1 others
PMID 29177617WHAT IT FOUND
Children with autism or Down syndrome gestured less than typically developing children, but parents gestured similarly across groups.
The same gesture types appeared in all groups, so lower gesture use did not match less parental gesture input.
Key findings
01Children with autism or Down syndrome produced fewer gestures than typically developing children.
02Parents of children with autism or Down syndrome produced similar amounts of gestures as parents of typically developing children.
03Children and parents differed in how gesture related to speech: parents mostly used gesture to complement speech, while children used gesture to add information not already in speech.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Sample size was modest, with 23 children in each group. The study observed children at one time point, so it cannot show whether children with autism or Down syndrome follow the same later path from gesture-speech combinations to spoken sentences. Parents were not randomly assigned, and the study did not test whether parental gesture causes child gesture. Children differed in chronological age. The typical development group was younger than the autism and Down syndrome groups, although gesture production was not correlated with age in any group. Iconic gestures were extremely rare among children, with only 14 instances across groups, so they were excluded from child gesture type analysis. Very few children with Down syndrome produced supplementary gesture-speech combinations. The sample was predominantly Caucasian, English-speaking, and mostly mothers, so the patterns may not generalize to other families. Observations were made in a laboratory play protocol, not in home or clinic routines.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that parents should gesture more to help their child's language. Parents of children with autism or Down syndrome produced similar amounts and types of gestures as parents of typically developing children, and the study did not test an intervention.