A few colleagues told me how they taught their kids to sign and how it reduced frustration, so I looked it up, my notes are here. A lot of the papers claiming benefits from sign language seem to be from the same few people, and when I looked for the opinions of others, I got:
Claims that signing with infants benefits language development are examined. Fourteen infants aged 19 to 23 months were tested on their comprehension and production of novel labels in a word learning task. Infants participated in two conditions. In the Sign + Word condition, infants learned both a signed and vocal label for a novel toy, whereas in the Word Only condition, infants were taught only a vocal label for the novel toy. Results showed that when children participated first in the Sign + Word condition, their comprehension and production abilities were lower than when trained first in the Word Only condition. Previous exposure to sign language was not related to infants’ performance on the word learning task, although there was a marginal effect of previous language ability on performance. Contrary to previous findings (e.g., Goodwyn, Acredolo, & Brown, 2000), the sign and word combination did not facilitate children’s learning of spoken labels.
… so it may have some small benefit, but nothing huge.
We tried teaching ours a few simple signs, the only ones that stuck were those for eating and drinking. Now he’s speaking a bit, so there’s not much point any more.
The study you quoted only seems to address if signing helped the child learn spoken word labels about certain toys.
The (possible) benefit of signing is that the child can communicate with you about whether they are hungry, thirsty, cold, hot, have a wet diaper, etc.--not about whether the child can name different toys. The study doesn’t address whether or not sign language reduces frusteration in children or whether children can learn signs for how they feel faster or slower than they can learn the same spoken words.
to use my goal taxonomy, I don’t think signing is being presented as a solution to goal 1, but as one for goals 2 and 3 -- you and the infant will be happier if the infant can communicate to you specifically that ey want food, rather than generally that ey are in distress and the world sucks and WAUGGGGHHHH
A few colleagues told me how they taught their kids to sign and how it reduced frustration, so I looked it up, my notes are here. A lot of the papers claiming benefits from sign language seem to be from the same few people, and when I looked for the opinions of others, I got:
… so it may have some small benefit, but nothing huge.
We tried teaching ours a few simple signs, the only ones that stuck were those for eating and drinking. Now he’s speaking a bit, so there’s not much point any more.
The study you quoted only seems to address if signing helped the child learn spoken word labels about certain toys.
The (possible) benefit of signing is that the child can communicate with you about whether they are hungry, thirsty, cold, hot, have a wet diaper, etc.--not about whether the child can name different toys. The study doesn’t address whether or not sign language reduces frusteration in children or whether children can learn signs for how they feel faster or slower than they can learn the same spoken words.
== removing some frustration from the early childhood experience
to use my goal taxonomy, I don’t think signing is being presented as a solution to goal 1, but as one for goals 2 and 3 -- you and the infant will be happier if the infant can communicate to you specifically that ey want food, rather than generally that ey are in distress and the world sucks and WAUGGGGHHHH