Gestures and Early Words in Typically Developing Indian Children

Background: Children develop pre-language and nonverbal skills from birth, which serve as precursors to the development of linguistic skills. Before beginning to use verbal language, infants predominantly use gestures and non-verbal behaviours to express their wants and desires. This study will aim at scrutinizing the development of gestures and verbal language in Tamil speaking infants exhibiting typical development from 10 months to 12 months. Methods: A pilot study with convenient sampling was considered with a sample size of 30 participants. The coding of the child’s gestures and verbal behaviour was carried out using ELAN Software Results: Expressive gestures were the most common, followed by metaphoric gestures across the three months. Beat gestures were found to emerge only from 12 months of age. Children's verbal expressive language development is still emerging, with only 10% displaying meaningful words by 11 months and 40% by 12 months, with no significant gender differences. The analysis depicted a statistically significant correlation between expressive gestures and metaphoric gestures with verbal behaviours. Conclusion: Children exhibit a variety of gestures and verbal behaviours between 10 to 12 months of age such as laryngeal grunting, vocalizations, imitative words, and non-meaningful words. Understanding how gestures, early words, and verbal conduct affect a child's language development, can assist prepare children with special needs for training as well as early developmental problem detection.