Dynamic Skills Theory (DST) posits that skills within domains may promote or suppress other skills as they first develop, resulting in spurts of growth in one skill concurrently with regression in another. I test this premise by examining development of two preverbal representational skills: manual pointing and symbolic gestures. Pointing is a robust early communicative gesture, indicating infants’ awareness of others’ attention, but limited in ability to represent infants’ conceptual repertoires as they grow beyond the immediate environment. Symbolic gestures are more specific but less flexible representational tools. Both skills predict language, yet no study has addressed the effects of these skills on each other. I observed the gesturing behavior of 10 infants over 8 months in a gesture-rich environment to test the effects of each skill on the other. Supporting DST, results show early pointing predicted earlier, but not more, symbolic gesturing, while symbolic gesturing did suppress pointing frequency.
2024. Infants’ Contributions to Prelinguistic Conversations Drive Language Learning. In WAIMH Handbook of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, ► pp. 69 ff.
Vallotton, Claire D., Kalli B. Decker, Alicia Kwon, Wen Wang & TzuFen Chang
2017. Quantity and Quality of Gestural Input: Caregivers’ Sensitivity Predicts Caregiver–Infant Bidirectional Communication Through Gestures. Infancy 22:1 ► pp. 56 ff.
Wang, Wen & Claire Vallotton
2016. Cultural transmission through infant signs: Objects and actions in U.S. and Taiwan. Infant Behavior and Development 44 ► pp. 98 ff.
Vallotton, Claire D., Tamesha Harewood, Ashley Karsten & Kalli B. Decker
2014. Infant Signs Reveal Infant Minds to Early Childhood Professionals. In Lived Spaces of Infant-Toddler Education and Care [International perspectives on early childhood education and development, 11], ► pp. 161 ff.
Vallotton, Claire D.
2012. Infant signs as intervention? Promoting symbolic gestures for preverbal children in low-income families supports responsive parent–child relationships. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 27:3 ► pp. 401 ff.
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