In this article, we provide an overview of the last twenty years of research on Indigenous sign languages, deaf community sign languages, co-speech gesture, and multimodal communication in the Australian context. From a global perspective, research on sign languages and on the gestures that normally accompany speech has been used as the basis for…

Baby sign language is advocated to improve children's communication development. However, the evidence to support the advantages of baby sign has been inconclusive. A systematic review was undertaken to summarize and appraise the research related to the effectiveness of symbolic gestures for typically developing, hearing infants with hearing…

Review of literature on indicators of the effectiveness of language intervention programs for autistic children showed that mitigation in echolalia was a critical characteristic, as it implied that the prerequisites for language were accessible through speech. Children whose speech ranged from mutism to unmitigated echolalia had a more negative…

Idioglossia is a private communication system, most commonly occurring in twins. It also occurs between singletons and between other siblings of multiple births. These communication systems range from manual gestures to a fully developed vocal language with its own grammar. The literature of idioglossia is scanty and largely anecdotal. Much of the…

Demonstrates that young autistic children suffer from deficits in social understanding and symbolic representations of other individuals. Data suggest that the core deficit appears to lie at the intersection of representational abilities and social experiences. (RWB)

This document reviews a number of recent studies written in French that investigate the nature of communication between 2-year-old infants and others. The review includes three parts. The first part focuses on studies aiming to constitute a behavioral catalog of the child. Characteristically, these studies offer a posteriori interpretations of…