ArticleInfant behavior & development2021
The origin of language and relative roles of voice and gesture in early communication development.
Article in Infant behavior & development, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Vocalisations are coupled with movement of all limbs throughout infancy.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A Pilot Investigation on the Relationship Between Infant Vocal Characteristics at 12 Months and Speech Motor Impairment at 4-5 Years.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2025Article
- How did vocal communication come to dominate human language? A view from the womb.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Infant vocal productions coincide with body movements.Developmental science · 2024Article
- Lessons for Theory from Scientific Domains Where Evidence is Sparse or Indirect.Computational brain & behavior · 2024Article
- A Preliminary Longitudinal Study on Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) Components in the First Year of Life.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The timeline of non-vocal and vocal communicative skills in infants with hearing loss.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2023Article
- Longitudinal changes in infants' rhythmic arm movements during rattle-shaking play with mothers.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Both vocalization and gesture are universal modes of communication and fundamental features of language development. The gestural origins theory proposes that language evolved out of early gestural use. However, evidence reported here suggests vocalization is much more prominent in early human communication than gesture is. To our knowledge no prior research has investigated the rates of emergence of both gesture and vocalization across the first year in human infants. We evaluated the rates of gestures and speech-like vocalizations (protophones) in 10 infants at 4, 7, and 11 months of age using parent-infant laboratory recordings. We found that infant protophones outnumbered gestures substantially at all three ages, ranging from >35 times more protophones than gestures at 3 months, to >2.5 times more protophones than gestures at 11 months. The results suggest vocalization, not gesture, is the predominant mode of communication in human infants in the first year.
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