Gesture is widely regarded to play an important role in communication, both
in conjunction with and independent of speech. Indeed, gesture is known to
develop even before the onset of spoken words. However, little is known ab
out the communicative conditions under which gesture emerges. The aim of th
is study was to explore the role of vision in early gesturing. We examined
gesture development in 5 congenitally blind and 5 sighted toddlers videotap
ed longitudinally between the ages of 14 and 28 months in their homes while
engaging in free play with a parent or experimenter. All of the blind chil
dren were found to produce at least some gestures during the one-word stage
of language development. However, gesture production was relatively low am
ong the blind children relative to their sighted peers. Moreover, although
blind and sighted children produced the same overall set of gesture types,
the distribution of gesture types across categories differed. In addition,
blind children used gestures primarily to communicate about objects that we
re nearby, while sighted children used them for nearby as well as distally
located objects. These findings suggest that gesture may play different rol
es in the language-learning process for sighted and blind children. Neverth
eless, they also make it clear that gesture is a robust phenomenon of early
communicative development, emerging even in the absence of experience with
a visual model.