There have always been three main Gurus of babysigning, mainly because these three people carried out most of the initial research. Their findings and contribution to the world phenomena of babysigning is undoubted, and hopefully due to this, new research and findings can be added over the coming months and years and the list of babysigning gurus will grow.

Joseph Garcia, who is based in the USA, had his interest in communication and sign language from an early age. Starting as a sign language interpreter and instructor he moved on to studying child development and language acquisition at university. His thesis lead to the first set of research into the area of communication and signing with hearing children. This original study involved just 17 babies and parents but the findings that evolved were groundbreaking. Those babies that were exposed to regular signs from the age of 7 months, were able to communicate with their parents through signs by 8 months. Joseph has written several books and collaborated in the UK for a version in BSL as well as his native ASL.

Around the same time as Joseph, the partnership of Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn from the university of California were also researching in a similar field. This partnership is still going strong and the pair are the founders of babysigns.com in the USA. In 1982 they began to investigate the use of gestural communication between hearing parents and babies. They noticed that babies between the ages of 10 and 24 months were spontaneously using simple hand gestures when they were not able to find the word for what they wanted to describe. Their research has stretched over 20 years and continues through the BabySigns Programme throughout America, their work has time again proven the benefits of signing, including the deduction of frustration for infants and parents, enhancing the baby-parent bond, boosting emotional development, helping babies to talk earlier and even raising IQ. The pair have written numerous books which will be reviewed here.

But all this is about to change. There are about to be three new gurus on the block and their up to date research is most welcome into the world of baby signing. Karen Pine, Elizabeth Kirk and Neil Howlett have been studying the effects of using baby gesturing on language development. Their research has a different slant on the benefits of baby signing, they have found that those babies who are exposed to signing did not differ from the control groups on language outcomes when followed up at 20 months. However their research has highlighted the fact that babies from low socioeconomic status backgrounds are more at risk of delayed language development. Some of their research focused on enhancing communication between mothers and babies from low socioeconomic backgrounds by encouraging the use of some gestures. This part of their research did show that the sign language has the potential to rectify the gap between low and high socioeconomic groups.

A close eye will be kept on this research and new developments posted in the news and reviews sections as it’s published.