It's pretty darn preliminary, but two recent bits of research indicate that yes, babies who are taught sign language might be able to communicate earlier in a way that makes life easier for them and their parents.
As reported on Science Blogs (hat tip: Jake), the first of the studies involved two babies and graphed their process learning a sign ("please" in one case, "more" in the other), and then showed that they could use it "in the real world" with people other than the researcher. It was interesting to me that one of the kids had Downs (she was a few months older, but it was still interesting to note that she learned the sign just as fast). I know sign is used extensively with developmentally delayed adults, so it makes sense to be including it here. I'm glad they aren't waiting until a million tests have been done on "normal" kids, which often seems to be the experimental pattern.
The second study measured the decrease in crying/whining in two pre-verbal kids who were taught signs for the things they usually cried about. The crying went down as the signing went up. Of course there's a huge flaw in that one, as Dave Munger points out in his post: Along the way, the adults stopped responding to the crying and only responded to the sign. But not responding to the crying could have made it decrease all on its own.
I look at that this way though: Crying is not actually bad behavior in a pre-verbal kid, it's a form of communication. So I wouldn't want to "train" them out of it without giving them an different way to communicate. If you can give them a sign instead, then you're ahead of the game. So the results of that study, not matter what it's actually measuring, are still hopeful.
I'm inclined to believe sign is useful, of course, just based on my own experience. My kid talked pretty early, but I still wouldn't have wanted to give up the communication we had in the months before that when she could tell us a handful of things like "more" and "water" and "windy" and "Daddy." It was so much better than having no clues except facial expressions and crying volume.
All in all, we would need research with much larger sample sizes to prove anything, but since there's no particular down side to teaching a few signs (or even full-fledged ASL) to a baby, any indication that it's helpful should be good news to parents eager to get a little communication going.
Photo by gfpeck.
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