These studies tested two questions about the developmental origins of children's sensitivity to iconicity with regard to number gestures: (1) whether children initially learn number gestures with sensitivity to the one-to-one correspondence between fingers and quantities or whether they learn them as unanalyzed symbols; and (2) whether sensitivity…

A study of 13 14-month-old and 12 18-month-old children found that the younger infants relied more on gestures and fussing to express their physical wants, whereas the older infants relied more on vocal responses, especially when clarification of their wants was needed. (MDM)

Sampled the speech of American, French, and Swedish mothers to their one-year olds, to analyze distribution of phonetic parameters of adult speech, as well as children's own early words. Found that variability is greater in child words than in adult speech, and mother-child dyads showed no evidence of specific maternal influence on phonetics of…

Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of young English-, French-, and Korean-speaking children showed that, across the three languages, children go through three similar developmental stages before they acquire the adult system of answering negative questions. Several language-specific phenomena were observed. (BC)