News

Literacy news

How sign language helps babies build word power

14 Mar 2010

Academics spent two years teaching mothers from low-income families how to use baby sign, in which gestures represent objects and actions. They then compared them to another group that had not undergone the lessons and found that babies exposed to sign language had a significantly better vocabulary.

The mothers involved in the study said they became more aware of what they were doing with their hands and understood their babies better by the end. One said: I feel he can understand me more and that has calmed me…made me less apprehensive about things.” Another parent said: “you get more of a bond”.

Lead author of the study, Elizabeth Kirk said that “the link between gesture and speech is very strong” but she also described how her research found that sign lessons only made a difference where children started out with poor language skills. Kirk believed it was a waste of money for other mothers to pay for courses, as demonstrated by a second study involving other families on higher incomes which produced markedly different results. Kirk said: “we looked at the babies at 8, 10, 12 and 20 months, filmed their interactions with their mothers and spoke regularly on the phone to the family. This time there was no effect on vocabulary for most children.” She concluded that these mothers were already using their hands to communicate and that their children were at “peak performance” in terms of language so could not improve further.

Kirk summarised: "Spending time interacting with your baby, and making the most of your hands when you speak as well as your voice, is the best thing that a mum can do to help her baby’s language flourish".

(Article first reported in The Observer)

Tags: Talk To Your Baby