Abstract:
Background: Communication is a complex process and reflects developments in cognition, motor, socio-emotional and language domains. Children between 6-12 months age fall in a unique stage of development where they are acquiring verbal mode of communication but still can effectively communicate with nonverbal modes such as eye gaze orientation and gestures. Methods: Nine mother-child dyads were videorecorded in free play mother-child interaction. The videos were analyzed to study the distribution of single, dual and triadic eye gazes orientation in the interaction. The gestural repertoire of the children was also studied as seven subcategories and their mean percentage of occurrence. Results: children used single eye gaze orientation the most (M=84.34%), followed by dual (M=10.02%) and then triadic eye gaze orientation (M=5.64%). In gesture/action category children used action with communication partner (deictic gestures) to the maximum extent (M=48.71%) followed by toy exploration (M=33.51%), alerting behavior (M=10.44%), toy manipulation (M=3.13%), mother assisted action (M=2.89%) and conventional gestures (M=1.32%). The children did not demonstrate use of any representational gesture. Discussion: Thus children of 6-12 months age considered in the study were predominantly preintentional communicators as demonstrated by highest percentage of occurrence of single eye gaze orientation. Also the children displayed highest mean percentage of occurrence of preintentional presymbolic gesture/action (49.97%) followed by intentional presymbolic gestures (48.17%) and lastly intentional symbolic gestures (1.32%). Thus children of 6-12 months age considered in the study were also mostly presymbolic communicators.