Abstract
This study explores the interplay between gestures and words in the early vocabularies of 12 normally developing Italian children at 16 and 20 months of age. Focusing on spontaneous production of verbal and gestural types and tokens, we assessed the diversity and semantic content of the verbal and gestural vocabularies. Results indicated that the gestural modality was utilized extensively by all subjects. Whereas only half the group had more gesture than word types in their repertoires at 16 months, eight of the 12 subjects exhibited a clear preference for communication in the gestural modality, employing a larger number of gestural than verbal tokens. By 20 months, almost all of the subjects had many more word types and used words more frequently than gestures. By providing some sensorimotor components of an object-referent, gestures may lessen the demand on developing symbolic skills and aid the child in the transition to highly abstract word-referent relationships.
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