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Analyses of elicited pantomime, primarily of English-speaking children, show that preschool-aged children are more likely to symbolically represent an object with gestures depicting an object's form rather than its function. In contrast, anecdotal reports of spontaneous gesture production in younger children suggest that children use multiple representational techniques. This study examined the spontaneous gestures of sixty-four 2-year-old Italian children and English-speaking Canadian children, primarily from middle-class Caucasian families. The Italian children produced twice as many gestures as Canadian children in a picture-naming task but produced a similar range of representational techniques. Two-year-olds were equally likely to produce gestures depicting function as form. These data suggest young children's communicative skills are supported by a symbolic capacity that reflects contextual communicative demands.

Upper limb gestures, as well as transitive actions (i.e. acted upon an object) when either executed or observed aVect speech. Broca’s area seems to be involved in integration between the two motor representations of arm and mouth (Bernardis and Gentilucci, Neuropsychologia, 44:178–190, 2006, Gentilucci etal., Eur J Neurosci, 19:190–202, 2004a, Neuropsychologia, 42:1554–1567, 2004b, J Cogn Neurosci, 18:1059–1074, 2006). The rele- vance of these data is in relation with the hypothesis that language evolved from manual gestures, and was gradually transformed in speech by means of a system of dual motor commands to hand and mouth (Gentilucci and Corballis, Neurosci Biobehav, Rev 30:949–960, 2006). The present study aimed to verify whether this system of integration between gestures (and transitive actions) and speech is involved also in the language development of infants. Vocalizations of infants aged between 11 and 13 months were recorded during both manipulation of objects of diVerent size and request arm gestures towards the same objects presented by the experimenter. Frequency in voice spectra increased when the infants manipulated or gestured to large objects in comparison with the same activities directed to small objects. These data suggest that intrinsic properties of an object evoking commands of manual inter- action are used to identify that object, and to communicate.