Look who's talking with gestures

July 5, 2000

By Kathleen Fackelmann, USA TODAY

Infants and toddlers who learn a simple sign language for common words may learn to speak faster and may do better on future IQ tests than children who learn to speak the usual way.

So say two California researchers who have studied baby signs in healthy children for more than a decade. The researchers rely on a homegrown sign language in which parents invent gestures for common words like "dog."

Yet the research findings have been met with disbelief by people who think that a child who learns to gesture will later be too lazy to speak.

Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn contend their studies have shown that the opposite may be true.

"You're jump-starting the language system," says Acredolo, a child development specialist at the University of California, Davis.

Children who learn signs may have more brain capacity later, says Goodwyn, a child development expert at California State University, Stanislaus.

Acredolo and Goodwyn are the authors of a book out today called Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love . It features baby signs as well as other games to boost a baby's brainpower.

At age 8, they're a year ahead

The authors' research has shown that 11-month-olds who learned gestures outscored their peers in language abilities a few months later, a bonus that remained in place at age 3.

Now the team has completed data showing that those same children outperformed their peers on a standard IQ test given at age 8.

"They were way ahead," Acredolo says.

Indeed, the 32 children who had learned sign language as babies did an average of 12 points better on the IQ test.

They scored an average of 114, while the 37 children who had never learned signs averaged 102. The researchers controlled for family income, education and other factors that influence IQ scores. The average child in the USA gets a 100 on the test.

"We were shocked," Acredolo says. The difference means that kids who had learned baby signs were about a year ahead of their peers, she says.

Acredolo will present the data this month at the International Conference on Infant Studies in England.

The research began in 1989 when Acredolo and Goodwyn recruited 103 families with 11-month-old babies living within about 30 miles of the University of California, Davis. The researchers taught some of the families to use baby signs. Parents in one control group didn't get any language instruction, while those in a second group were told to talk to their babies frequently.

Researchers taught parents in the signing group to use a gesture when saying a common word. For example, many parents would say "caterpillar" and use the gesture of a wiggling index finger.

Signs stop by age 3

The idea is to let toddlers communicate with simple signs starting at about age 1. At that age, children can't gain enough mastery over their tongues to form a lot of words. But they can use their fingers and hands to make simple gestures, Acredolo says.

The children in the signing group pulled ahead almost immediately, Goodwyn says. Those children, when tested at age 15 months, spoke more and understood more than members of the control groups. The signing group continued to do better at age 3, she says.

Children use baby signs until their ability to talk takes off, Acredolo says.

At age 2, toddlers begin to drop the gestures in favor of words, although some will use the occasional sign for a hard-to-say word. By age 3, most children don't use gestures at all, the researchers say.

During the first few years of life, a child's brain must wire itself for tasks such as talking, reading and problem-solving.

Children with baby signs seemed to get a head start on the process, the researchers say. Those babies used signs for words before they could talk.

In addition, they seemed to have more words at their command, Acredolo says.

The data suggest that baby signs may spark other critical thinking skills that lead to a better IQ score, the researchers say.

But Stanley Greenspan, a child development expert at George Washington University Medical School in Washington, D.C., cautions that kids in the signing group may do better on tests simply because they got extra attention.

He says attention by itself might translate to better test scores.

At the same time, Acredolo and Goodwyn have dispelled the old fear that sign language delays spoken language, says Adele Abrahamsen of Washington University in St. Louis.

While there's no scientific proof of an IQ boost, gestures can offer a frustrated baby a clear advantage: Babies can use gestures much earlier than they can talk, says Diane Anderson, a language researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

These ties bind before baby talks

Oklahoma parent Nicole Tucker says son Bryce learned baby signs when he was 11 months old in a play group sponsored by the health department in Tahlequah.

Tucker says sign language helped her build a relationship with Bryce, now 18 months old, before he could talk.

"It was so exciting to interact with him at such a young age," she says.

She says her 4-year-old daughter, Ashley Jane, helped teach Bryce some signs, including one for hot. Bryce uses that sign to indicate that he knows when a piece of food is too hot to eat.

"The signs can be helpful," says Greenspan, a past president of Zero to Three, a Washington, D.C., group for infants, toddlers and their families. Yet he offers a cautionary note for parents.

It's OK to use baby signs as long as you don't neglect the other aspects of your child's development, such as helping him fall in love with you, says Greenspan, author of Building Healthy Minds. Parents who drill a baby with signs might end up with a stressed-out toddler, he says.

Goodwyn and Acredolo agree but say that parents who have fun with baby signs give their children a head start.

"Every parent teaches their baby to wave bye-bye," Goodwyn says. "Why do we stop there?"