Cultural diversification of communicative gestures through early childhood: A comparison of children in English-, German-, and Chinese- speaking families

This study included variety of different types of gestures and examined whether children’s use of communicative gestures varies by their cultural backgrounds and ages. 714 parents of children (6–36 months old) from U.S.A. English-, German-, and Taiwan Chinese- speaking countries completed the questionnaire on their children’s use of each gesture described in the survey. We used logistic regressions to examine the effect of children’s culture and age, and the interaction effect (culture×age). Children were more likely to use all gestures except reaching, showing, and smacking lips for “yum, yum” as their age increases. In addition, there were gestures that showed significantly different probabilities across children’s cultural backgrounds. A significant interaction effect was shown for five gestures: reaching, showing, pointing, arms up to be picked up, and “quiet” gesture. Results suggest that the influence of culture on young children’s communication emerges from infancy.
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - Category: Child Development Source Type: research