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What is it about?

All adults produce gestures to represent shapes or movements of objects (otherwise known as iconic gestures) but we don't know a lot about when and how babies first start producing these kind of gestures. This study was interested in learning about what babies' first iconic gestures are like and what is going on in the conversations they are having with their caregiver when they produce them. We identified the first 10 iconic gestures produced by five English-speaking children in videos recorded in their homes of them taking part in everyday activities. Babies produced their first iconic gesture between 12 and 20 months, which were mostly actions. The gestures didn't always start off simply and become more complex as the babies got older. Most of the time, the gestures were not copied from adults but were invented or adapted by the babies themselves. Babies are impressive communicators and it is always important to consider the context when researching the development of gestures.

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Why is it important?

Different studies have different ideas about what counts as an iconic gesture and there have been inconsistent findings about when children are first able to produce them. We came up with a wider definition of this type of gesture. We did a detailed analysis of what the gestures were like and we explored them in a natural home setting rather than an experimental one. We found evidence that infants could produce their own iconic gestures at a younger age than previously suggested and that they seemed to understand their own gestures since they weren't copying them from their parent.

Perspectives

KGSorry, your browser does not support inline SVG.

I greatly enjoyed writing this article; my collaborators are awesome and it is wonderful to see my first article in its final published form. I think that iconic gestures are fascinating and that babies can do a lot more than we sometimes credit them with.

Kirsty Green
University of Warwick

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This page is a summary of: Infants can create iconic gestures during natural interactions with caregivers, Gesture, January 2025, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/gest.24007.gre.
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