Symbolic Gesturing

Symbolic gesturing is a way of communicating and “speaking” through specific hand signals and physical actions to represent objects, events, needs, and interests. This form of non-verbal communication allows children to better understand the reciprocal relationship involved when two people have a conversation and precedes verbal communication during a child’s language development, which proves that children can learn and form an understanding of the world around them before they are able to speak. But that developmental stage between understanding of the world and conveying an understanding of the world through speech is a particularly difficult stage for parents and children alike; parents try to create and communicate verbal labels for objects and needs for their children, but the children have not physically developed the fine motor skills that is involved when annunciating words or sounds. Through the practice of symbolic gesturing, children develop the ability to regularly engage in a conversation that is comprehendible to both the parent and child, enhances semantic development and teaches them how to respond to events and objects appropriately.

Many studies have shown that when parents integrate symbolic gestures with verbal labels for objects and events, infants and toddlers are able to better comprehend multiple meanings associated with these objects or events and expand their knowledge of the world around them. In a longitudinal study conducted by psychologists Dr. Susan Goodwyn, Dr. Linda Acredolo, and Catherine Brown (2000), they found that after monitoring three separate groups of infants where there was one experimental group that implemented symbolic gesturing strategies, the experimental group outperformed th...

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... focus on what learning processes and strategies a child develops after acquiring language and communication skills through symbolic gesturing and how they affect the child’s academic performance, social adaptability, and motivation in an educational setting. The implications of the research cited also suggests a need for more research on the socio-emotional effects of symbolic gesturing because the results of both studies showed an increase in comprehension in communicating needs and interests for both infants and their parents. It would also be interesting to see how symbolic gesturing could benefit children despite their SES background or environmental settings. If symbolic gesturing is beneficial to a child’s overall development, it should be implemented into practices in early education like preschool and kindergarten and fostered by teachers and parents.