The Emergence of Symbols in Language and Action: Similarities and Differences. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, No. 17.

A study is reported relevant to the relationship between first words learned by children and gestural symbolization under a variety of contextual conditions. It is part of a larger longitudinal study of 32 children at 10, 13, 20, and 27 months of age. The children were seen in three standardized situations for eliciting gestural and vocal symbols: (1) a set of three complex scenarios including an eating script, a drinking script, and a bed script; (2) a type of multiple choice test for language comprehension; and (3) presentation of single schemes with single objects. Analysis of the data from these measures indicates that as the amount of non-symbolic contextual support for a symbolic gesture decreases, the number and strength of correlations with language production increases. The findings also bear out the predictions of some previous research, namely, that the kind of gestural symbol which is most like vocal naming is a symbol that is relatively independent of its object or referent. (AMH)