Gesture and Motor Skill in Relation to Language in Children with Language Impairment.

Infants begin developing in the womb but motor skills and language development come sometime after being born. As babies age, they learn to crawl and then other motor skills develope such as grabbing things, and babbling. Usually language and motor skills are studied seperatly but the article if found studied them against each other. The purpose of the study was to to explore gesture and motor ability and their relationship to children with language impairment. The research had 3 goals: 1. characterize spontaneous gesture movement and its relation to language in children that had been referred for language impairment, 2. examine fine and gross motor skills in children with language impairment and typically developing kids, 3. to examine the extent to which the two measures contribute to expressive language. The researcher tested eleven children with language impairment and 16 children that were reguraly developing children of the same age. They completed 2 narration picture examinations and their language and getures were observed. The results they found were that when language is impaired, motoro skills are also delayed but gestures compensate for the delay in motor skills.


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Iverson, J., Braddock, B., (2011, February ). Gesture and Motor Skill in Relation to Language in Children with Language Impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Vol. 54.Retrieved from EBSCOhost database on September 14, 2011.