ABSTRACT Typically developing (TD) children refer to objects uniquely in gesture (e.g., point at a cat) before they produce verbal labels for these objects (“cat”). The onset of such gestures predicts the onset of similar spoken words, showing a strong positive relation between early gestures and early words. We asked whether gesture plays the same door-opening role in word learning for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS), who show delayed vocabulary development and who differ in the strength of gesture production. To answer this question, we observed 23 18-month-old TD children, 23 30-month-old children with ASD, and 23 30-month-old children with DS 5 times over a year during parent–child interactions. Children in all 3 groups initially expressed a greater proportion of referents uniquely in gesture than in speech. Many of these unique gestures subsequently entered children’s spoken vocabularies within a year—a pattern that was slightly less robust for children with DS, whose word production was the most markedly delayed. These results indicate that gesture is as fundamental to vocabulary development for children with developmental disorders as it is for TD children.

中文翻译：

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早期手势为自闭症、唐氏综合症和典型发展儿童的口语词汇发展提供帮助

摘要 通常，发育中的 (TD) 儿童在为这些物体（“猫”）产生语言标签之前，会以独特的姿势（例如，指向一只猫）指代这些物体。此类手势的出现预示着类似口语的出现，表明早期手势和早期词语之间存在很强的正相关关系。我们询问手势是否在自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 和唐氏综合症 (DS) 儿童的单词学习中发挥相同的开门作用，他们的词汇发展延迟并且手势产生的强度不同。为了回答这个问题，我们在亲子互动中观察了 23 名 18 个月大的 TD 儿童、23 名 30 个月大的 ASD 儿童和 23 名 30 个月大的 DS 儿童，这些儿童在一年内发生 5 次。所有 3 组中的儿童最初在手势中比在言语中表达了更大比例的独特指示物。许多这些独特的手势随后在一年内进入了儿童的口语词汇——这种模式对于患有 DS 的儿童来说稍微不那么强大，他们的单词产生最明显延迟。这些结果表明，手势对于发育障碍儿童的词汇发展与 TD 儿童一样重要。