Baby sign language is the use of sign language in order to communicate with infants and toddlers. While infants and toddlers have a desire to communicate their needs and wishes, they lack the ability to do so clearly because the production of speech lags behind cognitive ability in the first years of life. Proponents of baby sign language say that this gap between desire to communicate and ability often leads to frustration and tantrums. However, since hand–eye coordination develops sooner than acquisition of verbal skills, infants can learn simple signs for common words such as "eat", "sleep", "more", "hug", "play", "cookie", and "teddy bear" before they are able to produce understandable speech.
Read more about Baby Sign Language: Behavioral Research, Developmental Research, Research Controversy, Practice, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words sign language, baby, sign and/or language:
“The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise?”
—Hugo Ball (1886–1927)
“Your old skin puckering, your lungs’ breath
Grown baby short as you looked up last
At my face swinging over the human bed,
And somewhere you cried, let me go let me go.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“When we dream about those who are long since forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have undergone a radical transformation and that the ground on which we live has been completely dug up: then the dead rise up, and our antiquity becomes modernity.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
““What may this mean? Language of Man pronounced
By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed!
The first at least of these I thought denied
To beasts, whom God on their creation-day
Created mute to all articulate sound;
The latter I demur, for in their looks
Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)