Investigating the effects of gesture on early word learning.

Word learning is one of the most important tasks for infants as they learn to communicate. Early vocabulary is linked to school-aged success, and infants hwo struggle sometimes go on to have developmental language disorder. Therefore, understanding what facilitates successful word learning is vital. Fortunately, gesture is an avenue that can be used to
investigate this. Parental gesture use is associated with an increased vocabulary later in development, demonstrating its importance to communicative development. However, we do not know the mechanisms behind this, as it has not frequently been investigated in infancy, and research is yet to examine which gestures infants attend to and how that aids their learning. Therefore, the aim of my PhD research is to investigate how gesture affects word learning, by studyinghow infants attend to gestures. To do this, I will conduct three studies. In study 1, I will use eye-tracking to investigate how infants' gesture awareness impacts their overall word learning. In Study 2, I will use eye-tracking to determine if specific gestures capture infants' attention and teach them new words. In study 3, I will use head-mounted cameras to build upon these findings by using an innovative technology to study attention towards gestures in a more natural environment. The findings of this research could form the basis for interventions and help in identifying children at risk of struggling with language. In conducting this research, I will develop skills in developmental science research methods,eye-tracking with infants, and data analysis.