What is Baby Sign and do I need to be using it with my baby?

If you pay attention to almost anyone speak, you will likely notice that most people use gestures, body language, and facial expressions in addition to words in communication. Linguistic communication is not limited solely to vocal communication! So what does this mean for babies? Beyond serving as a simple means of expression, gesturing can be important in linguistic development (Behne et al., 2005; Behne et al., 2012; Brooks et al., 2008; Kirk et al., 2022; Rowe et al., 2009). Taking this one step further, there has been an increase in teaching sign language to babies—even hearing babies! Books like “My First Book of Baby Signs” and “Baby Sign Language Made Easy” started popping up in bookstores in the early 2000s as ‘Baby Sign Language’ became more mainstream. So, what does baby sign language look like, and what can this mean for linguistic development? The short version is: it won’t hurt, it might (at least for a brief time) be helpful for parent-child interaction, but it’s also not anything like a full-fledged sign language like ASL (American Sign Language). ASL and other sign languages have the  same full-fledged complexity as spoken languages, which Baby Sign does not.

Most baby signs are taught to supplement or replace other forms of pre-linguistic communication, like crying or cooing (Thompson et al., 2007). Some common baby signs are ‘more,’ ‘up,’ and ‘please.’ One of a few ways of teaching baby signs is classical conditioning—using something desirable, like food, to teach a sign to communicate the desire (Thompson et al., 2007). As a result, infants can learn to sign ‘up’ to be picked up, rather than resorting to crying, which is more ambiguous and can be harder for a parent to interpret. Physical forms of communication can be learned by infants sooner in development than verbal communication, thus offering an opportunity for more direct communication by infants prior to full linguistic development (Caselli et al., 2012; Rowe et al., 2009; Thompson et al., 2007). Baby sign language isn’t usually anything very advanced—just a few simple signs—but some parents find it makes infant-parent communication easier in the early months!

The scientific literature linking baby sign and language development is a bit scattered and sparse, but there’s a huge literature on a related topic: gesture production. Gesture production is a more general term referring to body language used to communicate—pointing, for example. Developmental psychologists have taken a particular interest in pointing behavior because it has been cited as especially important in linguistic development relative to other forms of gesturing (Kirk et al., 2022). Importantly, early pointing production and comprehension have been shown to correlate with subsequent vocabulary growth (Brooks et al., 2008; Kirk et al., 2022; Rowe et al., 2009). In one study, for infants with Down Syndrome, baby sign was shown to predict later vocabulary growth, while for typically developing children, vocabulary growth was tied to deictic (object-centered) gesture usage (Özçalışkan et al., 2016). On the other hand, a longitudinal study on typically developing infants using baby sign showed no clear linguistic boost (Kirk et al., 2016). There is still a lot to learn about the link between early gesture production and vocabulary growth, and potential for more insight into more complex gesturing as it relates to linguistic development. Previous literature raises the potential importance of other factors in this relationship: socioeconomic status, linguistic input, and typical vs. nontypical development (Kirk et al., 2016). Although baby sign may not be the key to a headstart on vocabulary growth across the board, and certainly isn’t necessary for typical language development to unfold, it can enrich infant-parent communication.

References

Behne, T., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2005). One-year-olds comprehend the communicative intentions behind gestures in a hiding game. Developmental Science, 8(5), 492–499.  

Behne, T., Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2012). Twelve-month-olds’ comprehension and production of pointing. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 30(3), 359–375.  

Brooks, R., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Infant gaze following and pointing predict accelerated vocabulary growth through two years of age: A longitudinal, growth curve modeling study. Journal of Child Language, 35(1), 207–220.   

Caselli, M. C., Rinaldi, P., Stefanini, S., & Volterra, V. (2012). Early Action and Gesture “Vocabulary” and Its Relation With Word Comprehension and Production. Child Development, 83(2), 526–542. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01727.x  

Kirk, E., Howlett, N., Pine, K. J., & Fletcher, B. (2013). To Sign or Not to Sign? The Impact of Encouraging Infants to Gesture on Infant Language and Maternal Mind-Mindedness. Child Development, 84(2), 574–590. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01874.x

Kirk, E., Donnelly, S., Furman, R., Warmington, M., Glanville, J., & Eggleston, A. (2022). The relationship between infant pointing and language development: A meta-analytic review. Developmental Review, 64, 101023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2022.101023  

Rowe, M. L., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2009). Early gesture selectively predicts later language learning. Developmental Science, 12(1), 182–187.  

Özçalışkan, Ş., Adamson, L. B., Dimitrova, N., Bailey, J., & Schmuck, L. (2016). Baby sign but not spontaneous gesture predicts later vocabulary in children with Down Syndrome. Journal of Child Language, 43(4), 948–963. doi:10.1017/S030500091500029X

Thompson, R. H., Cotnoir-Bichelman, N. M., McKerchar, P. M., Tate, T. L., & Dancho, K. A. (2007). Enhancing early communication through infant sign training. Journal of applied behavior analysis, 40(1), 15–23. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.2007.23-06 

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