What is it about?
This is a longitudinal study of children assessing the relation between [1] visual recognition memory (6 months), [2] deferred imitation (9 months,) and [3] turn-taking behavior (14 months), and the outcome variable of communicative gesture production assayed at 14 months.
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Why is it important?
Together the three predictors accounted for 41% of the variance in communicative gesture production, as measured by the Swedish version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory.
Perspectives
It's noteworthy that deferred imitation was identified as the strongest predictor. It has long been a desire of developmental scientists to explain the roots of the communicative-linguistic abilities that flower in the second half year of life. The present results suggest that predicting language outcomes will be enhanced if researchers simultaneously take into account both cognitive and social abilities.
Professor Lars Smith
University of Oslo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Exploring the relation between memory, gestural communication, and the emergence of language in infancy: a longitudinal study, Infant and Child Development, January 2006, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/icd.462.
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