Gesturing in mother-child interactions

Numerous studies have indicated that when adults interact with very young c hildren, they modify their speech in a consistent fashion. Although the cha racteristics of these modifications have been well documented, relatively l ittle is known about the frequency and types of gestures that accompany adu lts' speech to young children. The present study was designed to provide da ta on maternal use of gesture during mother-toddler interactions and to ass ess whether maternal use of gestures changes as children's speech becomes p rogressively more complex. Twelve upper-middle-class Italian mother-child d yads were videotaped in their homes for 45 min when children were 16 and 20 months of age. Results indicated that mothers made use of a "gestural moth erese" characterized by the relatively infrequent use of concrete gestures redundant with and reinforcing the message conveyed in speech. In addition, individual differences in maternal gesture and speech production were high ly stable over time despite substantial changes in children's use of gestur e and speech, and there was some evidence for positive relations between ma ternal gesture production and children's verbal and gestural production and vocabulary size within and across observations. Findings are discussed in terms of the functions that maternal gesture may serve for young language l earners.