Last month, I had the opportunity to attend the training course ‘Gestures: What’s the point?’ by Mary Gavin (Speech and Language therapist), run by Course Beetle. I was keen to learn more about the development of this specific area, as SLT’s we naturally model and encourage gestures however I hadn’t personally seen, or been on, any specific training courses on it. I was hoping to learn how best to support this area of communication development, as I know how integral the development of gestures e.g. pointing, can be on a child’s communication development.
Photo shows screenshot of ‘Gestures: What’s the Point?’ training PowerPoint
My key learning points from the training were:
• Gestures are defined as ‘intentional, communicative movements of the body, particularly hand, arms, face or head that children learn during reciprocal social exchanges’ (Acredolo & Goodwyn,1988)
• Gestures are one of the first forms of communication to appear and one of the first indicators of intentionality.
• Gestures can convey more meaning than what you would think! Children use gestures for a number of communicative functions including to protest, request, to react, to give and to describe. ‘And in Neurotypical children, all these communication functions are in place before the end of their 1st year’ (Von Hofstenet al, 2025)
• The development of intentional communication between 9-13 months coincides with the onset of the 4 ‘deictic gestures’ which are ‘reach’, ‘give’, ‘point’ and ‘show’.
• Reach: for something, or someone
• Give: an object to someone
• Point: close (e.g. a book) or far away e.g. to a bird
• Show: hold up an item to share it with someone.
• ‘Dietic’ gestures develop first, then conventional gestures, then descriptive.
• ‘Conventional’ gestures are used to send a message e.g. to greet (wave) show affection (blow a kiss) or direct e.g. (‘stop’ ‘come here’). Many conventional gestures do not appear until after age 2.
• ‘Descriptive gestures’ are used alongside speech to reinforce a topic (e.g. holding out hands to describe something as ‘big’) Research has shown they are the least used gesture in both neurotypical and autistic children.
• Before modelling Makaton/Signalong signs, which are descriptive gestures, we should be thinking – does the child have deictic gestures?
• A difference found between neurotypical and autistic children is the amount they switch their focus and look at their partner; which is why specific goals for eye contact for autistic children should be avoided.
Photo shows an example of a child using the dietic ‘show’ gesture
Photo shows an example of a child using the dietic ‘give’ gesture
I hope sharing my learning points was useful to readers and sparks some ideas or an interest in learning further!
