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ERIC Number: EJ1311044
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Sep
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1467-7687
EISSN: N/A
Communication Changes When Infants Begin to Walk
West, Kelsey L.; Iverson, Jana M.
Developmental Science, v24 n5 e13102 Sep 2021
Learning to walk allows infants to travel faster and farther and explore more of their environments. In turn, walking may have a cascading effect on infants' communication and subsequent responses from caregivers. We tested for an "inflection point"--a dramatic shift in the developmental progression--in infant communication and caregiver responses when infants started walking. We followed 25 infants longitudinally over 7 months surrounding the onset of walking (mean walk onset age = 11.76 months, SD = 1.56). After learning to walk, the pace of gesture growth (but not vocalization growth) increased substantially, and infants increasingly coordinated gestures and vocalizations with locomotion (e.g., by walking to a caregiver and showing off a toy bear). Consequently, caregivers had more opportunities to respond contingently to their infants during walking months compared to crawling months (e.g., "What did you find? Is that your bear?"). Changes in communication were amplified for infants who began walking at older ages, compared to younger walkers. Findings suggest that learning to walk marks a point in development when infants actively communicate in new ways, and consequently elicit rich verbal input from caregivers.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health (DHHS)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: R01HD41607; F32DC017903