Infants can create iconic gestures during natural interactions with caregivers

Abstract

Adults across cultures produce iconic gestures, but little is known about the emergence of iconic gesturing in infants. This study aimed to identify plausible instances of infants’ earliest iconic gestures to learn more about their form and the interactional contexts in which they emerge. We identified the first 10 iconic gestures produced by five English-speaking children in a naturalistic longitudinal video corpus. In identifying gestures, we cast a wide net that included gestures produced during pretend play and those performed with objects in-hand. Analyses of gestures’ form and context show that children produced their first iconic gesture between 12 and 20 months, the great majority of which depicted actions. We found mixed evidence suggesting that children may produce conceptually less-challenging gestures earlier. Infants produced more object-in-hand gestures than empty-hand gestures to depict transitive actions but also more imagined-object than body-part-as-object gestures. Most gestures were produced independently of adult models, and many demonstrated innovation. Overall, within natural interactions, infants demonstrated impressive representational abilities and did not always rely on parental scaffolding. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the interactional context when conducting research on the development of gesture.