Research has long supported the idea that families with higher incomes and education levels talk more with their children and speak to them in complex sentences. A new study by psychologists at the University of Chicago indicates toddlers who use more physical gestures also have more developed vocabularies by the time they reach school age.
“We actually found extra gesturing in these high socio-economic status [SES] families,” Susan Goldin-Meadow, co-author on the study, tells the BBC. “Gesture and speech go hand-in-hand.”
The researchers studied 50 families from diverse economic backgrounds. They recorded video of children with their parent, or primary caregiver, for 90-minute sessions, during ordinary home activities. Fourteen-month-old children from high-income, well-educated families used gesture to convey an average of 24 different meanings during the 90-minute session. Meanwhile, children from lower-income families conveyed only 13.
Their study, in the journal Science, suggests gestures could play an indirect role in word learning by eliciting speech from parents. “For example, in response to her child’s point at the doll, mother might say, ‘Yes, that’s a doll,’ thus providing a word for the object that is the focus of the child’s attention,” they wrote.
(photos by veader and ellecer on Flickr)
