The relations between ‘baby-signing’, child vocabulary and maternal mind-mindedness

Babysign classes are increasingly popular across the UK. Benefits are said to include increasing child vocabulary, reducing frustration, and improving parent-child relations. A further relationship between the use of babysign and maternal mind-mindedness has been suggested. It was hypothesised here that parents choosing babysign classes would describe their child using more mind-minded comments than those attending other toddler classes and that their children would have greater language skills. The mind-mindedness scores of 34 mother-child dyads attending parent-toddler activities were measured using Meins et al.’s (2010) research protocol. Mothers also completed a communicative checklist for language and gesture use and understanding. Results indicate that mothers who choose to use babysign describe their children with significantly more mind-minded attributes, but language skills do not differ between the two groups of children. This supports the hypothesis that mothers using baby-sign would show more mind-mindedness than mothers not using babysign.