Child Deictic Gesture Use and Maternal Labeling in Toddlers With Down Syndrome

The purpose of this study was to determine the association between the deictic gesture use of toddlers with Down syndrome (DS) and their mothers' use of labels. Relationships between child and maternal deictic gestures; maternal use of labels; and broader, traditional measures of maternal linguistic input were explored.

Participants were 25 toddlers with DS (14-31 months) and their mothers. Videos of a 15-min mother-child free-play were coded for child and maternal deictic gesture use. All maternal utterances were transcribed and coded to compute the number of complete and intelligible utterances, mean length of utterance in morphemes, number of different words, use of referential nouns, and labels. Labels were operationally defined as referential nouns appearing alone, in a noun phrase (e.g., blue pants), or in a declarative sentence with the linguistic form pronoun + copula + noun phrase (e.g., that's the duck). Mothers completed the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales and the MacArthur-Bates Communication Development Inventory-Words and Gestures about their child.

Despite the low frequency of toddlers' deictic gestures and maternal labels, all deictic gestures, all forms of pointing (touch, proximal, distal), and touch points were positively correlated with their mothers' use of labels.

The results of this study contribute to the body of work documenting child deictic gestures and maternal labeling in DS, as well as how deictic gestures and labels in adult input are operationally defined. Potential clinical implications are discussed.

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.31141639.