Babies who gesture have bigger vocabularies:
The researchers filmed 50 Chicago-area children and parents from diverse economic backgrounds and counted the number of gestures, such as pointing at a picture.The team found that 14-month-olds from high-income, well-educated families used gesture to convey an average of 24 different meanings during each 90-minute session, compared with 13 meanings conveyed by children from lower-income families.
When the same children entered school at age four and a half, those from higher-income families had better vocabulary scores on standardized tests.
“At 14 months, an age when there aren’t even socioeconomic differences in their talk yet, we see there are differences in their gestures,” Rowe said.
The videos revealed that parents from wealthier families gestured more with their children than the other parents.Rowe said the findings suggest that gestures can at least partly explain vocabulary differences between the groups, and may prove useful as the basis for interventions.
“Can we manipulate how much parents and children gesture, and if so, will it increase their vocabulary?” Rowe said.
The obvious answer to Rowe’s question is, no; the causality doesn’t flow that way.