Acredolo L, Goodwyn S
Psychology Department, University of California, Davis 95616.
Child Dev. 1988 Apr;59(2):450-66.
2 studies are presented that document the spontaneous development by normal infants of nonverbal gestures to symbolically represent objects, needs, states, and qualities. These symbolic gestures are shown to be a typical rather than rare phenomenon of early development and to function in ways similar to early verbal symbols. Indeed, the case is made that these gestures and early words are both representative of common underlying mechanisms, in particular, the recognition that things have names. In the first study, mothers of 38 17-month-old infants were interviewed in regard to their infants' verbal and nonverbal development. The second study, designed to document with greater precision the findings of the interview study, is a longitudinal study of 16 infants who were followed from 11 to 24 months. Both studies provide evidence that symbolic gestures tend to develop in tandem with the child's early words, that girls tend to rely more heavily than boys on such gestures, that structured parent-child interactions are important to the development of these gestures, that the gestures tend to depict the function rather than the form of objects, and that the use of gestural labels is positively related to verbal vocabulary development. Implications of these findings for theories of language development and for speech pathology are discussed.
本文介绍了两项研究，它们记录了正常婴儿自发发展出用非语言手势来象征性地表示物体、需求、状态和特征的过程。这些象征性手势被证明是早期发展中的一种典型而非罕见的现象，并且其功能与早期语言符号相似。事实上，有证据表明这些手势和早期词汇都代表了共同的潜在机制，特别是认识到事物有名称这一点。在第一项研究中，对38名17个月大婴儿的母亲进行了访谈，了解她们婴儿的语言和非语言发展情况。第二项研究旨在更精确地记录访谈研究的结果，是一项对16名婴儿从11个月到24个月进行跟踪的纵向研究。两项研究均提供了证据，表明象征性手势往往与儿童的早期词汇同步发展，女孩比男孩更倾向于依赖此类手势，结构化的亲子互动对这些手势的发展很重要，这些手势往往描绘物体的功能而非形式，并且手势标签的使用与语言词汇发展呈正相关。文中还讨论了这些发现对语言发展理论和言语病理学的意义。
