The Science of Baby-Sign Language

    Increasingly, parents are using sign language to communicate with their infants, allowing them active communication with their pre-speaking babies (researchers refer to them as pre-lexical).  Numerous benefits have been tied to using sign language, including help in building language skills, increased IQ, and increased literacy skills. While these are obviously desirable results, my husband and I were drawn to the idea of signing with Q-ball as a way to increase our bond with her as we are better able to meet her needs through increased communication.  Not to mention the idea that we could have an earlier peak into her thoughts and personality. Super neat!

     At 8 months, Q-ball is now at the tail end of what is considered the optimal age for introducing sign language, according to Baby Sign Language Basics: Early Communication for Hearing Babies and Toddlers by Monta Briant, which we have been using as our guide.  We started using 7 signs (milk, diaper change, cat, book, rattle, mirror, and we later added eat) with her at about 5 months and have tried to practice them on a daily basis (although I must admit to took me awhile to make it a habit, and sometimes signing is the last thing that crosses my mind when trying to change a fussy, squirmy baby's diaper!) So far, we have not noticed her making any signs, but I can tell she is focusing on the signs when we make them, and she appears to get excited at the sign for "milk".

      Briant's book provides some great information as do other baby-signing resources.  But, they tend to focus on the benefits and how-tos, and do not necessarily describe how signing leads to these amazing results, so I did some research.  The study I found focused on "maternal multimodal communication"- basically using multiple methods to communicate with your infant.  Throughout the study, as with sign language, the two methods used are voice and movement or touch. 

     I found the results fascinating and another amazing example of the strong biological attachment between mother and infant (for those of are regular follows of my blog, this shouldn't come as a surprise...)  The researchers, as well as many other findings from previous studies, found that "motherese," defined as the way that mothers (and people in general) often talk to infants which includes increased changes in tone and a slower rate of speech, has evolved to meet the changing needs of infants as they develop.  In other words, mothers unconsciously provide the necessary level of support to allow their babies to learn language. 

      This is where sign language comes in.  The major way to assist infants is to communicate with them using "temporal synchrony" or visual motions and voice simultaneously. Researchers suspect that temporal synchrony serves as a way of grabbing the infant's attention. Additionally, it helps infants find word-object relations. According to the ecological perspective of development, infants use their increased senses to take in the language cues the mother provides. Likewise, according to the dynamic systems theory, the development of language is a symbiotic relationship in which the mother senses the infant's perceptual abilities and matches her style of communication accordingly.  

       The results of the study support both of these theories.  The researchers found that mothers decreased the amount of motion cues as infants aged and gained increased language abilities.  Additionally throughout all age groups studied, mothers used more hand motions with verbs than with nouns (so, within the context of the study, they were more likely to demonstrate a jump than to point to the hand puppet jumped).  This supports the fact that infants vocabularies contain more nouns than verbs.  

      So, how can you be a secure base for your baby as he learns language?  Use sign language!  Or, at the very least use lots of demonstrating actions and pointing to help your little along his path of cognitive development. 

Have you signed with your baby? What did you like most about the experience? Do you have any tips to share?

Sources:

Briant, M. (2004). Baby sign language basics: early communication for hearing babies and toddlers. Hay House: NYC.

Gogate, L., Bahrick,L., & Watson, J. (2000). A study of multimodal motherese: The role of temporal synchrony between verbal labels and gestures. Child Development, 71,(4), 878-894.

Beyond Physical Milestones, Part VII: Conclusion

           So, given the massive amount of information we have been presented about physical development in infants, how can you be a secure base for your child’s physical milestones?  I believe that all of these theories would agree on the following:

1.    Love your baby!  Although it was not specifically discussed in the previous posts, studies have found that babies who are provided very little stimulation, fed on limited schedules, and primarily constrained to their cribs suffer physical and cognitive disabilities and high rates of infections.

2.    Provide an opportunity/learning rich environment for your baby. To borrow a phrase from the information-processing theory, give your baby an opportunity to become an “expert” by providing lots of time to practice motor control.  This can be done through lots of tummy time and different types of toys to manipulate.

3.    But, take cues from your baby. Babies are, after all, just little people. Just like adults, they have different attention spans, likes and dislikes, and strengths and weaknesses. Not to mention, babies get tired! If you bought your baby the highest-rated play mat on Amazon, but he won’t look at it, don’t force the issue.  Just try again the next day.          

4.    Be patient!  All theorists agreed that maturation places some level of constraint on an infant reaching development milestones.  If Suzy is still seeing the world through monocular vision, it is highly unlikely she’ll be able the reach and grasp the blocks!  Beyond this, research with identical twins shows that helping your baby practice specific developmental milestones (rolling over, sitting, block building, etc.) does not hasten the onset of skills, especially for basic tasks like walking.

Source:

Eliot, L. (1999). What’s going on in there? New York: Bantam Books.

What is a secure base?

         Developed by developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, the secure base phenomenon describes how the primary caregiver (typically the mama) is attached to her baby or, in more technical terms, maternal-infant attachment patterns.  Within this phenomenon, the primary caregiver, serves as a "secure base" for the baby's exploration of his physical environment.  Ainsworth researched her secure base model in her experiment, the Strange Situation.  Within the Strange Situation experiment, infants 12 months old are observed with their mothers in progressively more stressful situations.  The infants and their mothers are placed in a room with toys for 21 minutes.  During this time, a stranger comes into the room and begins to play with the child; the mother leaves the room and then returns on two occasions, and, lastly, the stranger leaves and again enters the room.  Throughout the experiment, the infants’ behaviors of “proximity seeking, contact maintaining, avoidance [of interactions with the mother], and resistance [to any of the mother’s attempts at interaction]” (Huth-Bocks, Levendosky, Bogat, & von Eye, 2004, p.487) are observed.  Based upon these observations, infants are classified as secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-ambivalent, or disorganized-disoriented.  The Strange Situation was combined with home observations to determine the mother's treatment of the infant during daily routines.

      In the observations, securely attached babies typically only cried when they noticed their mothers were missing, whereas crying by insecurely attached infants was unpredictable and seemingly unrelated to the mother’s actions.  So, securely attached babies look for and depend on their secure bases (mothers) for support in stressful situations, but babies that are not securely attached know that they cannot necessarily depend on their mothers.   

   Based upon these findings (which have been repeated by many researchers), we can conclude that responding to our babies needs is the most effective way to develop a secure attachment pattern with our babies.  Popular "cry it out" methods certainly do not meet this criteria!  

Sources:

Ainsworth, M. & Marvin, R.S. (1995). On the shaping of attachment theory and research: An interview with Mary D. S.Ainsworth (Fall 1994). Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 60(2/3), 2-21. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1166167

Allen, J.P., McElhaney, K.B., Land, D.J., Kuperminc, & Jodl, K.M. (2004). Stability and change in attachment security across adolescence. Child Development, 75(6), 1792-1805. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3696677 

Huth-Bocks, A.C., Levendosky, A.A., Bogat, G.B., & von Eye, A. (2004). The impact of maternal characteristics and contextual variables on infant-mother attachment. Child Development, 75(2), 480-496. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3696653