Increasing deictic gesture use to support the language development of toddlers from high poverty backgrounds

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Highlights

  • Toddlers at-risk for language delays showed gains in gesture use after a month-long intervention.

  • Targeting gestures could increase rates of communication, building additional word-learning opportunities.

  • Future research should examine if these strategies can be embedded by caregivers.

Abstract

This study uses a single-case, multiple probe design to investigate the effects of a naturalistic intervention on deictic gesture use in toddlers who are from low-SES backgrounds. The month-long study included strategies drawn from the literature on early communication interventions to increase the rate of child gesture use in toddlers at-risk for later delays. These strategies include frequent modeling of deictic gestures (points, shows, reaches, and gives), creating opportunities for the child to gesture by using environmental arrangements, choices, and wait time, and by responding and expanding each gesture. All three child participants made gains in their rates of deictic gestures after the onset of intervention with no overlap between the intervention and baseline conditions. Children also made gains to gesture + vocalization combinations and gesture + word combinations in this short-term intervention. This study offers preliminary evidence that prelinguistic interventions for children at-risk can be used to increase rates of communication in toddlers in poverty.

Section snippets

Gesture use as a prelinguistic predictor of language outcomes

Developmental research consistently indicates that before words emerge, gestures serve a critical function in the child’s growing expressive communication abilities (Crais, Douglas, & Campbell, 2004; Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Watt, Wetherby, & Shumway, 2006). Towards the end of a child’s first year and into the second, deictic gestures like reaching, pointing, showing, and giving offer children a mechanism to seek linguistic input from their caregivers while engaging with a familiar adult

The caregiver’s role in gesture development

Caregivers play a critical role in supporting a child’s gesture development by responding to child gestures with words that “translate” the gesture into language and by modeling gestures to provide supportive cues that augment the adult’s linguistic input. A caregiver’s responsiveness to an infant or toddler’s gestures predicts how quickly and how well a child’s symbolic language skills develop (Dimitrova, Özçalışkan, & Adamson, 2016; Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009). When a caregiver responds with

Interventions to support gesture use

While there are a number of language interventions that seek to support child language in the preschool period, fewer interventions target gesture use in young children who are at risk for communication delays due to their low-SES backgrounds (Vallotton, 2009). Some studies have taught “baby signs” or symbolic gestures to support infant and toddler communication (Vallotton, 2012), but fewer interventions teach deictic gestures as a primary outcome. In one recent experimental study of 15

Participants

Two girls and one boy between the ages of 13 months and 18 months at entry participated in the study. Children were included if they were not eligible for Part C services, were between 12 and 18 months of age, and met the income qualifications of EHS programs. Participant children attended an Early Head Start (EHS) center, and their families qualified for services based on their low-income levels. Two of the three children were African-American and one child was biracial (African-American and

Results

All three participants showed an increase in their use of deictic gestures subsequent to intervention. Specific trends and secondary dependent variables are described below and are displayed in Fig. 1.

Discussion

This study offers preliminary data about the effectiveness of an intervention designed to increase the rate of deictic gesture use in toddlers at risk for language delays due to their SES. All three children showed immediate and positive changes in their rates of deictic gesture use that only occurred after the onset of intervention, and all obtained rates of gesture use outlined in descriptive research as being typical of their age range (Wetherby et al., 1988). Two of the three children

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    We are grateful for the children and families who participated in this project. We also extend special thanks to Kayla Ramsey, whose hard work and dedication to coding and analysis was critical to the completion of this manuscript.

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