The research was carried out by a team from the University of Chicago. Lead researcher Prof Susan Goldin-Meadow filmed 50 families from a variety of economic backgrounds, paying particular attention to the way the care-givers and children interacted.

She observed that frequent hand gesturing in the adult tended to produce similar gestures in the children watching. She also observed that children who conveyed more meanings with gestures at age 14 months exhibited a much larger vocabulary at age 54 months. Those gesturing less had less well-developed vocabularies, she said.

These differences in gesturing were apparent from as young as 10 months.

Prof Goldin-Meadow also found that adults - and therefore children - from better-off homes were more likely to gesture than in less well-off homes. This could have a significant impact when the children reached school, she said, and it helps to explain why children from better-off families tend to do better at school than children from low-income families.

“Vocabulary is a key predictor of school success and is a primary reason why children from low-income families enter school at a greater risk of failure than their peers from advantaged families,” Prof Goldin-Meadow said.

Better-off toddlers at 14 months conveyed on average 24 different meanings with gestures, while less well-off toddlers used only on average 13.

While the researchers made no attempt to explain the process by which gestures influence vocabulary development, they speculated that getting a response to a gesture from an attentive adult might indirectly lead to a bigger vocabulary.

“For example, in response to her child’s pointing at the doll, mother might say, ‘yes, that’s a doll’, thus providing a word for the object that is the focus of the child’s attention,” the research team says. (Source: Irish Times)