There is a lot of research portraying the importance of gestures for communication. Research has shown that gesturing helps young infants and children learn.
Especially in the deaf community, there is work showing that these children are more likely to use gestures to communicate. At the age that hearing infants start to babble, deaf infants start to babble in their own way – through gesturing that looks like sections of words in sign language. There is also research explaining that deaf children can learn how to communicate with each other through hand gestures, even without concretely being taught sign language.
Hearing children can also greatly benefit from learning gestures – baby signs have become a helpful way to communicate with babies before they begin talking. These baby signs were developed to stand for important phrases that infants need to express, like “milk”. There are certain products out there that are based on these baby signs claiming they will improve an infant’s language development, although there is no evidence supporting that these baby signs are particularly helpful in terms of long-term development. However, there is no evidence suggesting that there are any negative effects either. If they find them helpful, parents can use these signs as strategies to help their hearing infants in communicating before they are able to specifically verbalize their needs.
The act of gesturing has also been shown to help children articulate what they know, but may not be able to verbalize. This evidence has been seen in specific math problems explained in the article.
When instructors gesture, research has shown that children are more effectively been able to learn the information. Specifically with math problems, when teachers combine verbalizing the explanation of the solution with gestures, this helps to draw attention to the more important parts of the teacher’s explanation.
Ethel Dvoskin
Research Assistant, UConn KIDS
Article link: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-baby-scientist/202108/the-handiness-gesture-childrens-learning