Signing in hearing babies

[Linda Acredolo]

Dear James,
I was delighted to see that both Brian MacWhinney and Adele Abrahamsen
have already responded to your query about sign language for hearing babies.
Indeed, my colleague Susan Goodwyn and I have been knee-deep in data on this
topic since our first publication in 1985 when we documented the SPONTANEOUS
development of what we call in our professional papers "symbolic gestures."
Since that time, with the help of a large grant from NIH, we have focused on
the effects of purposefully encouraging 10 to 24 month-old infants to develop
this nonverbal mode of symbolic communication as a way around the obstacles
posed by the articulatory component of language. Our purpose in doing so was
both scholarly (i.e, to learn more about language development) and practical.
We had both personally experienced the variety of ways in which providing
babies with this form of communication enriches the parent-child relationship
by reducing frustration, increasing the ability of the baby to share
experiences, and providing parents with a window into their baby's mind.
However, before we could feel comfortable promoting the idea among parents in
general, we had to determine using good experimental methods, that there would
be no negative consequences to verbal or cognitive development.
To this end we followed a group of about 40 babies in an experimental
group and 80 babies in two control groups from 11 to 36 months, assessing them
on a variety of standardized language and cognitive measures at 11, 15, 19,
24,
30, and 36 months. These data indicated clear advantages for the "Baby Sign"
babies (the term we with families) in both receptive and expressive language.
(References included below.)
Most recently we assessed performance on the WISC-III at age 8 (after 2nd
grade). The results, which we will be presenting at the International
Conference on Infant Studies in Brighton, England on July 18th, indicated an
impressive (and statistically significant) IQ advantage for the Baby Signers
for both the Verbal and Performance sub-scales.
With these data in hand, we published the book to which Brian and
Adele
refer: Baby Signs--How to Talk With Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk. A
UK
and Australian version is being published in the summer by Vermilion Books (a
subsidiary of Ebury I believe). It is also scheduled for publication in
German,
Portugal, Japan, Taiwan, Israel, Latin American, and Spain. Mr. Garcia, whose
book you apparently saw highlighted on TV in the UK, has had the luxury of
being able to use our 16 years of research to his own commerical advantage.
Please feel free to contact me for reprints if you would like them.
--Linda Acredolo

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Psychology Department
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA 95616
Phone	(530) 752-1874
FAX 	(530)752-2087