William Atkins
Thursday, 19 March 2009 21:13
Science -
Biology
Page 1 of 2
Based on a study conducted by U.S. researchers with 14-month-old children, the more hand gestures and signals that a child makes the better his or her vocabulary will be when they enter kindergarten.
According to U.S. psychologist
Susan Goldin-Meadow (of the Goldin-Meadow Lab, Department of Psychology University of Chicago (Illinois):
“Children on the first day of school vary greatly in vocabulary. The question is, why?” [Science News: “Kids’ gestures foretell better vocabularies” (March 14, 2009, page 17)]
Goldin-Headow and fellow colleague stated in the abstract to their Science paper,
“Children from low–socioeconomic status (SES) families, on average, arrive at school with smaller vocabularies than children from high-SES families.”
So, to answer their own question, Dr. Goldin-Meadow and U.S. psychologist
Meredith L. Rowe (also from the University of Chicago, but who will be joining the Human Development Department at the University of Maryland at College Park in the fall of 2009) videotaped and then studied the daily gesturing and signaling of fifty 14-month-old children and their primary caregivers, which is most cases was their mothers.
They counted the number of gesturing and signals from each child, such as the nod of their head in response to their mother’s voice or the movement of their fingers when they see something out of their reach.
Then, when the children were 54 months of age (or, 4.5 years), they tested their vocabulary skills about the time the children entered kindergarten.
They found the children that gestured and signaled the most when they were younger had a larger vocabulary when they were older.
What did the two authors say about the conclusions within their study of these children? Please read page two.
