This should be (2 and a half pages): Follow the sample, but DO NOT COPY it.
Read the article that I have uploaded “Impact of Symbolic Gesturing on Early Language Development” by Goodwyn, Acredolo, and Brown carefully and briefly summarize the research. Be sure you fully address the following questions: What is the purpose of this research or study? What conclusions or findings does/do the researcher(s) make? What implications are there for future research, inquiry, or analysis in this area?
Sample:
The research study entitled, “Impact of Symbolic Gesturing on Early Language Development,” conducted by Goodwyn, Acredolo, and Brown (2000), addressed the benefits ofutilizing symbolic gesturing to facilitate communication with normal, non-deaf infants who were still developmentally unable to articulate their needs and desires verbally. The intent of this research was to determine whether symbolic gesturing usage was beneficial or detrimental toinfants’ acquisition of verbal language abilities, and the researchers found that infants in the Sign Training group, who were regularly exposed to simultaneous child-directed verbal speech and infant sign language, acquired more sophisticated verbal language abilities after a 25 month intervention program than infants in the Non-Intervention control group or the Verbal Training control group (Goodwyn et al., 2000). These “Sign Training” children were the only childrenwho were deliberately encouraged to use gestures to communicate observations, needs, and desires. Because verbal speech required a strong command of tongue placement, lip movement, and vocal cords, infants in this experimental group were also taught simpler, non-verbal hand motions such as tapping their chest rapidly when they were afraid, touching their index fingers together when they wanted more of something, or grabbing their neck when they observed a giraffe in their surroundings (2000). These symbolic gestures gave normally developing infants in the Sign Training group the ability to communicate with adults while they were in the midst of struggling with verbal speech. Not only did Goodwyn et al. (2000) find that it facilitated family relations by alleviating the task of determining what infants were trying to express, but they also determined that, when the caregivers simultaneously paired them with verbal labels, symbolicgesturing improved the exposed children’s lexicon. It gave them the tools to express their intentions in two different ways—verbally and non-verbally—and the more a child is able to and does say, the more adults tend to provide child-directed speech in order to encourage them (2000). Thus, it also increases the amount of linguistic exposure children experience before a given age, so naturally, the more they hear, the greater rate at which their verbal language develops.
The research Goodwyn et al. (2000) conducted was based on six different measures of expressive and receptive language abilities, one of which was the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). According to this study, each test was administered to each of the 103 children at particular moments when the infants were 11, 15, 19, 24, 30, and 36 months old. Their data demonstrated that it was advantageous for parents to supplement verbal speech with symbolic gesturing before the child was three years old because children in the Sign Training group had higher composite receptive language scores, composite expressive language scores, Mean Length of Utterance values, longest utterances, combined receptive and expressive scores, and higher quantities of tests in their favor as opposed to the Non-Intervention Control group ( 2000). What remains to be seen, however, is why the linguistic advantage that symbolic gesturing provided diminished after the children were three years old. According to Goodwyn et al. (2000), the Sign Training group still demonstrated an advantage over the Non- Intervention Control group after 36 months, but this advantage seemed to decrease with
time. Therefore, the “Impact of Symbolic Gesturing on Early Language Development” leavesimplications for future inquiry regarding the reasons behind this observation. It also begs the question as to what particular aspect of verbal speech is unattainable for those infants who demonstrate an ability to comprehend the nature and circumstantial usage of language via sign language but are unable to articulate those same concepts verbally. Therefore, another concept for future inquiry involves what makes phonemic production more difficult than phonemic reception or gestural production.
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