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A Cross‐Cultural Analysis of Early Prelinguistic Gesture Development and Its Relationship to Language Development
Author(s) -
CameronFaulkner Thea,
Malik Nivedita,
Steele Circle,
Coretta Stefano,
Serratrice Ludovica,
Lieven Elena
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.13406
Subject(s) - gesture , language development , ethnic group , psychology , vocabulary , vocabulary development , developmental psychology , cultural diversity , utterance , language acquisition , child development , nonverbal communication , linguistics , sociology , philosophy , mathematics education , anthropology
Many Western industrialized nations have high levels of ethnic diversity but to date there are very few studies which investigate prelinguistic and early language development in infants from ethnic minority backgrounds. This study tracked the development of infant communicative gestures from 10 to 12 months ( n = 59) in three culturally distinct groups in the United Kingdom and measured their relationship, along with maternal utterance frequency and responsiveness, to vocabulary development at 12 and 18 months. No significant differences were found in infant gesture development and maternal responsiveness across the groups, but relationships were identified between gesture, maternal responsiveness, and vocabulary development.