Getting to the Point: Examining Associations Between Adult Interactional Strategies and Infant Gestures.

The developmental importance of infant gesture use is well established, yet few investigations examine what adults can do to facilitate infant gestures. We used an event lag with pauses sequential analysis to generate an index of association between each adult interactional strategy and deictic infant gesture during ten-minute play interactions with 27 typically developing infants (11-25 months) and trained interventionists. We ran correlations to examine potential relationships between the sequential associations, child age, and language scores.

Coaching Childcare Providers to Support Toddlers' Gesture Use With Children Experiencing Early Childhood Poverty.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of an intervention in which childcare providers (CCPs) are coached to support toddlers' gesture use during every day classroom routines. Method This study uses a multiple-baseline across strategies single-case experimental design to examine the impact of a coaching intervention on three CCPs' use of communication strategies with toddlers experiencing early childhood poverty. The CCPs were coached with a systematic framework called Setting the Stage, Observation and Opportunities to Embed, Problem-solving and Planning, Reflection and Review as they learned to implement three strategies to support toddlers' gesture use- and .