Children who make broader use of gestures to communicate at 14 months of age have larger vocabularies when they are 4-1/2 years old and ready to start school, according to a study released today in the journal Science.
The finding might help explain why rich kids have larger vocabularies than poor children. Wealthy parents talk to their children more (that's been known), but the new study shows that they also use a broader "vocabulary" of gestures.
The researchers noted that the vocabulary disparity between rich and poor remains relatively constant during the school years, is an important predictor of school success, and a primary reason why kids of low socioeconomic status have a greater risk of failure.
The key variable is not the amount of gestures. Nor is it the "size" of gestures. (Researchers have actually looked at Italians to confirm this point!) It's the variety of gestures--head shaking, and pointing at different objects to convey different meanings.
The authors of the study--psychology Prof. Susan Goldin-Meadow and post-doctoral fellow Meredith Rowe, of the University of Chicago--said their work does not prove that broader use of gestures causes better language development; they report a correlation. But they suspect that there is a profound connection. "The act of gesturing may change the mind," Goldin-Meadow said at a press conference in Chicago.
Goldin-Meadow said she has preliminary evidence that changing children's gesturing might improve their vocabularies.
The researchers observed mothers and children in their homes, video-taping 90 minutes of normal interaction. The key factor was not the number of gestures, or how often they were used, but the variety of meanings conveyed with gestures. A broader vocabulary of gestures was the thing that predicted a larger vocabulary when the kids were nearly 5 years old.
As is the case with so many studies in the social sciences, the researchers did not look at fathers. Of the 50 parents in this study, 49 were mothers. "We looked at primary caregivers," Rowe said when I asked her about the emphasis on mothers.
Perhaps there is no difference between mothers and fathers with regard to gestures. But one wonders: Do fathers have any particular role to play in closing the educational gap between rich kids and poor kids? How do we know unless researchers look at fathers?
