Babies and Sign Language...

Are we losing our ability to read gestures and facial expressions with our culture and society depending less on face-to-face communications? Some of the latest thinking is that speech evolved from gestural endeavors. Babies can be taught sign language.  My cousin used this to communicate with her baby.  Hand gestures, the most basic forms of communication, might have preceeded spoken language and if you can see how babies learn this, signing before the ability to say the words, it makes sense.

Laura Berg, a teacher in Canada, has worked with her baby, Fireese, to teach her signing.  In giving me permission to use her video, Laura told me that she lectures on the topic of using sign language to promote literacy at universities in Canada.  She also, as a teacher, uses signing in her "mainstream" classes.

Laura's videos are fascinating to watch and she has a website, Smart Hands. Here is a video of the signs she taught her daughter before Fireese could master talking.
 

Another interesting video of signing to the song, Son of a Preacher Man, is below the flip.

Believing that language is biology and human cognition, the authors of The Gestural Origins of Language  think "that language is an embodied system is finding increasing support from neurophysiology, and especially from the so-called "mirror system" in the primate brain, which is activated both when such an animal performs an action and when it observes the same action being performed by another individual."

We're missing out on a big part of our communication potential by not using and paying attention to the potential of gestures.

Clip, via MindHacks.

Comments

[tut-tut]

Thought provoking . . .

[joared]

I've always strongly believed in the whole language concept for communication which encompasses verbal as well as non-verbal. Just one aspect of non-verbal is gesture. I believe it goes without saying that "normal" infant communication between infant and parent automatically incorporates special verbal approaches and all aspects of non-verbal language including gesture. Expanding use of gesture to include more expression and signs would not only seem to be beneficial but even critically important for some infants, especially those outside the norm, as has been done for many years with select groups. Certainly, new and additional neurological connections and synapses are being forged which facilitates cortex development.

[Claude]

Fascinating video. Thanks for posting this

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[Marcianna]

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