Baby Sign Language: Accelerating Communication?

There is perhaps no sensation more helpless for a new parent than watching a ten-month-old infant scream, face flushed and fists clenched, pointing vaguely at the kitchen counter. Is it hunger? Thirst? Do they want the blue cup or the red cup? The linguistic gap between a child’s desire and their ability to articulate it is often the birthplace of the famed “terrible twos.”

Enter Baby Sign Language. In recent decades, the practice of teaching pre-verbal infants manual gestures to communicate needs has moved from a fringe experiment to a mainstream parenting tool. But beyond the convenience of knowing your baby wants “more” crackers, what is actually happening in the developing brain?

From a linguistic perspective, baby signing is a fascinating case study in language acquisition. It invites us to question the relationship between motor skills and cognitive development. Does bypassing the vocal cords accelerate communication, or does it become a crutch that delays spoken language? Let’s dive into the research regarding manual signs and the pre-verbal mind.

The Linguistic Premise: Why Hands Before Mouths?

To understand why baby signing works, we first have to look at biological maturation. In the timeline of human development, the fine motor skills required to control the hands develop sooner than the complex fine motor skills required for the vocal tract.

Speech is mechanically difficult. It requires the precise coordination of the tongue, lips, jaw, and breath control to produce specific phonemes. However, the ability to wave “bye-bye” or point (a proto-declarative gesture) emerges much earlier. Linguists and developmental psychologists realized that the cognitive ability to label the world arrives before the biological ability to speak those labels.

Baby Sign Language—which is technically distinct from full American Sign Language (ASL) as it usually involves “key word signing” alongside speech without ASL grammar—bridges this gap. It utilizes the child’s existing dexterity to scaffold early communication.

The Big Fear: Does Signing Delay Speech?

When baby signing first gained popularity, the primary skepticism from the linguistic community and worried grandparents alike was simple: “If the baby can sign, why would they bother learning to talk?”

It is a valid hypothesis based on the principle of least effort. However, research largely puts this myth to rest. The seminal research conducted by Drs. Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn, funded by the National Institutes of Health, compared infants who signed with those who did not.

Their findings, and subsequent studies, consistently show that signing does not delay speech. On the contrary, it may facilitate it. The reasons are rooted in the mechanics of language learning:

• Joint Attention: When a parent teaches a sign, they usually say the word, perform the gesture, and point to the object simultaneously. This creates a rich, multimodal learning environment that reinforces the neural connection between the concept (the signified) and the word (the signifier).
• Increased Interaction: A baby who signs “milk” gets an immediate response (“Oh, you want milk!”). This positive reinforcement encourages the child to communicate more, leading to more parent-child verbal interaction, which is the single biggest predictor of vocabulary size.

The “Tantrum Tamer”: Bridging the Expressive-Receptive Gap

Linguists frequently distinguish between receptive language (what a child understands) and expressive language (what a child can produce). Between the ages of 9 and 18 months, the gap between these two is distinct and frustrating. A child may understand the complex concept of “I want the toy that is currently on top of the fridge”, but their vocal output is limited to “bababa.”

This friction is a major cause of behavioral outbursts. Research suggests that arguably the most immediate benefit of baby signing is emotional regulation rather than raw IQ points. By providing a manual outlet for expressive language, the frustration gap narrows.

While this is often categorized as “behavioral”, it is fundamentally linguistic. It demonstrates that the drive to communicate is innate and powerful; when the vocal channel is blocked by immaturity, the brain happily accepts a manual alternative to transmit information.

The IQ Debate: A Nuanced Verdict

Does teaching your baby to sign “airplane” guarantee they will be a genius? This is where the marketing often outpaces the science.

Early studies by Acredolo and Goodwyn suggested that 8-year-olds who had signed as babies scored significantly higher on IQ tests than their non-signing counterparts. These results fueled a massive industry of baby genius products. However, subsequent replications of these studies have been mixed.

Current linguistic consensus leans toward a more moderate view: Baby signing provides an early advantage in vocabulary acquisition and sentence complexity. Signing babies often have larger vocabularies at 18 months than non-signers. However, by age three or four, non-signing children typically catch up, and the difference becomes statistically insignificant.

So, signing might not create a higher “ceiling” for intelligence, but it heavily influences the trajectory of early development. It allows high-level cognitive interaction to begin months earlier than it otherwise would.

Iconicity: Why Some Words Stick

One specific area of linguistic interest in baby signing is the concept of iconicity. In spoken language, words are mostly arbitrary (there is nothing about the sound “cat” that resembles a feline). In sign language, many signs are iconic—they visually resemble the thing they represent.

• Bird: Flapping fingers mimicking a beak.
• Ball: Hands forming a sphere.
• Sleep: Hands pressed against a tilted head.

Research suggests that infants learn iconic signs faster than arbitrary ones. This offers a window into how the infant brain maps symbols to the real world. The visual link helps fasten the concept, making it an easier cognitive leap than auditory processing alone.

Conclusion: A Tool for Connection

Is Baby Sign Language a magic bullet for creating a linguistic prodigy? Probably not. The research suggests that while it provides an early head start in vocabulary and syntax, peer groups largely equalize by preschool.

However, dismissing it fails to acknowledge the profound immediate benefits. Signing turns a passive infant into an active conversational partner. It validates the child’s thoughts before they have a voice. From a linguistic standpoint, it proves that language is not merely a function of the mouth and ears, but a deep-seated cognitive faculty that will use whatever tools—hands, eyes, or voice—are available to connect with another human being.

For parents, the verdict is encouraging: You cannot break your baby’s language development by signing. You are merely opening the door to conversation a few months early.