Gestures are an important part of everyday communication throughout all stages of life. They are particularly significant in early development as they are closely linked to language development. According to existing literature, gestures predict the number of words children understand and use later in their development. The aim of the master's thesis was to use longitudinal data and analyze the correlation between early gestures (deictic and representational) and receptive and expressive vocabulary later in development in typically developing Slovenian infants and toddlers, while also determining whether different types of gestures have varying impacts on expressive and receptive vocabulary. We found statistically significant correlations between early gestures and both receptive and expressive vocabulary, suggesting that the number of gestures at twelve months predicts the number of words understood at fifteen months. Similarly, the number of gestures at nine and twelve months predicts the number of words toddlers use at fifteen months. Additionally, we discovered that different types of gestures are associated with toddlers' vocabulary to varying degrees. None of the three types of gestures (deictic contact, deictic distal, and conventional representational) statistically significantly correlated with the size of the receptive vocabulary, while two types of gestures significantly correlated with expressive vocabulary, most notably the conventional representational gestures, followed to a lesser extent by the deictic contact gestures. These statistically significant correlations suggest possible influences of different types of gestures on vocabulary, with conventional representational gestures, and to some extent deictic contact gestures, standing out as those that impact the size of expressive vocabulary.
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