Infants' use of baby sign to extract unfamiliar words from the speech stream

Abstract

The ability to extract words from fluent speech is crucial for language learning. Infants use environmental information to aid in this process. Baby sign is a popular trend that may aid an infant in segmenting the speech stream and extracting words. A study designed to test the effects of baby sign to aid infants in extracting words from the speech stream was conducted. Six-month-old infants were shown videos of passages where either the speaker's face, hands (sign only), or both (face and signs) were visible. A head-turn preference procedure was used to test infants' ability to identify familiarised nonsense words versus control nonsense words. The resulting data are the first to demonstrate that prior exposure to baby sign can aid an infant in extracting unfamiliar words from fluent speech and six-month-old infants can use a speaker's face as a cue to extract words from speech.

Keywords:

• baby sign
• speech segmentation
• language learning

Notes on contributors

Vannesa Mueller, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is an assistant professor in the Speech-Language Pathology program at the University of Texas El Paso. Her research focus is on the novel use of AAC with normally hearing children and children with autism spectrum disorders.

Alma Acosta is a graduate student in the Speech-Language Pathology program at the University of Texas El Paso. Her research interests include sign language and child language development.