The role of gestures in the transition from one- to two-word speech in a variety of children with intellectual disabilities.
BACKGROUND
Over the past decades the links between gesture and language have become intensively studied. For example, the emergence of requesting and commenting gestures has been found to signal the onset of intentional communication. Furthermore, in typically developing children, gestures play a transitional role in the acquisition of early lexical and syntactic milestones. Previous research has demonstrated that, particularly supplementary, gesture-word combinations not only precede, but also reliably predict the onset of two-word speech. However, the gestural correlates of two-word speech have rarely been studied in children with intellectual disabilities.


OBJECTIVE
The primary aim was to investigate developmental changes in speech and gesture use as well as to relate the use of gesture-word combinations to the onset of two-word speech in children with intellectual disabilities. A supplementary aim was to investigate differences in speech and gesture use between requests and comments in children with intellectual disabilities.


METHODS
Participants in this study were 16 children with intellectual disabilities (eight girls, eight boys). Chronological ages at the start of the study were between 3;1 and 5;7 years; mental ages were between 1;5 and 3;3 years. Every 4 months within a 2-year period children's requests and comments were sampled during structured interactions. All gestures and words used communicatively to request and comment were transcribed.


RESULTS
Although children's use of spoken words as well as the diversity in their spoken vocabularies increased over time, gestures were used with a constant rate over time. Temporal tendencies similar to those described in typically developing children were observed: gesture-word combinations typically preceded, rather than followed, two-word speech. Furthermore, gestures (deictic gestures in particular) were more often used to request than to comment.


CONCLUSIONS
Overall, gestures were used as a transitional tool towards children's first two-word utterances. This result highlights gesture use as a robust phenomenon during the early stages of syntactic development across populations. The observed differences in gesture use between requests and comments might be explained by differences in interactional as well as in procedural context.
Experimental Otorhinolaryngology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, BelgiumCentre for Parenting, Child Welfare, and Disabilities, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, BelgiumCommunication and Computer Centre, MODEM, Antwerp, Belgium.
Joke
J
Vandereet
Experimental Otorhinolaryngology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, BelgiumCentre for Parenting, Child Welfare, and Disabilities, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, BelgiumCommunication and Computer Centre, MODEM, Antwerp, Belgium.
Bea
B
Maes
Experimental Otorhinolaryngology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, BelgiumCentre for Parenting, Child Welfare, and Disabilities, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, BelgiumCommunication and Computer Centre, MODEM, Antwerp, Belgium.
Dirk
D
Lembrechts
Experimental Otorhinolaryngology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, BelgiumCentre for Parenting, Child Welfare, and Disabilities, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, BelgiumCommunication and Computer Centre, MODEM, Antwerp, Belgium.
Inge
I
Zink
D002657:Child Development; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003147:Communication Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology*; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests / Q000592:standards; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009633:Nonverbal Communication; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013060:Speech; D014825:Vocabulary