Article published In:
GestureVol. 20:1 (2021) ► pp.1–29
Gesture development in Peruvian children and its relationship with vocalizations and vocabulary
We examine gestural development, and correlations between gesture types, vocalizations and vocabulary at ages 8 to
15 months, employing data from MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories for Peruvian Spanish, in the
first such study with Peruvian children. Results show (1) significant change with age in the production of gesture types, with
older children producing more; (2) important correlations between gesture types, and both vocalization types and vocabulary after
controlling for age effects; and (3) correlations between the trajectory of the pointing gesture in its two modalities (whole-hand
and index-finger) with age, vocalizations, and vocabulary, an effect that persists with respect to vocalizations after controlling
for age. Our findings, based on a sample from a non-weird population, support a key role for gesture production in early
communicative and linguistic development.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Early gesture development
- Relations between gestures, vocalizations, and first words
- Cultural differences in gestural production
- The emergence and development of the pointing gesture
- The present study
- Method
- Participants
- Materials
- Procedure
- Results
- Gesture production by age
- Vocalizations and vocabulary development by age
- Gesture, vocalization and vocabulary by sex and maternal educational level
- Correlations between gestures, vocalizations and vocabulary
- The development of pointing
- Discussion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
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