thumb|A child signing the concept of "bird"
Baby sign language is the use of manual signing allowing infants and toddlers to communicate emotions, desires, and objects prior to spoken language development. These gestures are taught in conjunction with speech to hearing children, and are not the same as a sign language. Sign languages, including ASL, BSL, ISL and others, are natural languages, typically used in the Deaf community. Because sign languages are as complex to learn as any spoken language, simplified signs are often used with infants in baby sign. Typically, developing children will produce their first gestures between the ages of 9 and 12 months without any prompting or assistance from a caregiver. Infants learn how to use their body language, eye gaze, and hand gestures as a way to attract attention and communicate. Once children gain some language production, they will couple language with gesture to further communicate. Since gestures are part of normal speech, teaching baby sign allows infants to learn an aspect of communication that is used with language. It is not, however designed to replace language. This demonstrates that infants are able to learn gestures before mastering verbal skills.
In an article in The Psychologist, Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon has considered in detail the theory behind the growth of this phenomenon and some of the claims made by its supporters. It is widely recognized that communication is at the heart of cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral development in children. Baby sign may assist in improving these significant developmental functions.
Baby signs create mutual attention between the parent and child leading to further elaboration of what the infant is communicating. Some of these areas included communicative, cognitive, social, adaptive behavior, physical, and fine motor skill development of children. Certainly, research into the effects of baby signing needs better control groups, such as children who are involved in equally interesting and fun activities based around adult and child language interaction, but not baby signing. This suggestion for further research implies that it may not be the baby signs themselves that facilitate language development but rather the underlying benefit being active, joint attention that is stimulated by baby sign.
Therefore, the enhanced joint visual attention during parent-child interaction empowers the infant to focus the topic and context of the conversation, clarify concepts, and creates added practice with symbolic interaction. These underlying mechanisms of baby sign are proposed to create benefits for the infant such as; enhancing vocabulary, advancing cognitive development, reducing tantrums and frustration, and improving the parent-child relationship and communication. More specifically language development is improved by advancing comprehension, promoting literacy and successfully allowing the infant to express their needs so the parent becomes more responsive and observant of their baby.
Why it may be neither beneficial nor harmful
Researchers have suggested the possibility of parents and experimenters being overly liberal in attributing sign or word status to early attempts at communication by children. Puccini and Liszkowski found that when infants associate labels with objects, they use verbal cues more frequently than gestures to make these associations. The process of further facilitating gesturing with baby signs is suggested to possibly cause interference toward children's mapping of these words. This may be a result of infants lacking enough attention to take in these two types of information and process it at the same time. Although no support for using baby sign was found in this study, there was also no negative effects found to be associated with language development when using baby sign with your child. It is possible that baby sign is working in support of infant's spoken language, but was not found to further their later language development. Prior to infants learning specific signs or developing language skills, they acquire the spontaneous use of gesture. Infants are quick to note if there is a connection between an item and a symbolic gesture. Once they make the connection infants will imitate actions that are produced by the caregiver. Consistency from the caregiver is crucial during the teaching and feedback stage in order for infants to learn from repetition. Parent-child interactions are vital to the learning of baby sign since the infant looks to the caregiver for guidance. By consciously demonstrating the sign to the infant, the caregiver and infant are sustaining joint attention which increases communication. When caregivers aid infants in creating the sign with their hands, they are further increasing encouragement, repetition, and communication. Based on this study, learning baby sign appears to be a beneficial tool for children if implemented in schools and day cares.
Media and Internet influences
Due to promotional products, easy access to baby sign tutorial videos, and representations in popular culture, parental attempts at signing with their baby may be more focused on the popularity social aspects instead of an intention to potentially enhance their child's communication skills.
A study examined the degree to which information about baby sign found on the internet was based on research.
Another study examined internet information found using Google Scholar as well as a few academic databases. Researchers examined whether results claimed baby sign encouraged developmental, social, cognitive, and language skills while achieving a greater bond between parent and child. The goal of asking this question was to find information that allows parents, caregivers, childhood educators, and clinicians to make informed decisions about the amount of emphasis to place on baby sign. When all the cited material was gathered there were 1747 articles with only 10 articles providing research regarding infant's developmental outcome in connection to baby sign.