Cascading effects is when development or achievements in one area influences achievements in other areas, not always easily recognizable as linked. Gross and fine motor skills have been related to language acquisition by assuming cascading effects (Thelen, 2002; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Iverson, 2022). However, the results are inconclusive (Adolf & Franchak, 2017; Andalò et al., 2022; Moore et al., 2019; Libertus & Viloi, 2016; Butterworth & Morris, 1996). 

One potential reason behind these results could be that “motor skills” is too static a measure, even if divided into gross (like walking, crawling, jumping, etc.) and fine motor skills (such as tweezer grip, hand-eye coordination, etc.). As motor-language relationships have been found when interactional aspects are taken into account (Karasik et al., 2014), motor behavior performed in interaction might be a more dynamic measure. It would also be a measure of children’s tendency to use their motor abilities.

Touch and gesture are different kinds of movements but differ from gross and fine motor skills by both being – by definition – closely intertwined in dyadic interaction. Touch is, together with gaze, the first communicative modality in use in infant-parent interaction. The “meaning” conveyed by touch is foremost of an emotional nature, spanning from negative to positive. Touch has few known associations to First Language Acquisition, although some studies indicate that specific kinds of touch could be related to word learning (Seidl et al.2015). 

Gesture has been regarded as a gateway to the first word production (Butterworth & Morris, 1996; Choi et al., 2021; Colonnesi et al., 2010). Gesture is further a symbolic form of movement as they carry conventional meaning. They also depend on motoric abilities, which is one reason why fine-tuned gestures like iconic or deictic are not typically seen until the end of a child’s first year or the beginning of the second year. 

In between emotional touch and symbolic gesture we have all kinds of movements, such as touching with an object, driving a toy car on the floor, acting on objects, etc. The handling of tools extends the child’s manual abilities (Adolph & Robinson, 2015; Smitsman & Bongers, 2003; Lockman & Kahrs, 2014). It has also been shown that tool use in adults strengthens the linguistic performance with complex syntactic structures (Thibault et al., 2021). In a study comparing high-risk infants with and without later ASD, infants who later received a diagnosis showed lower frequency of grasp types at 24 m o a, and less functional actions at 10 m o a, than the high-risk no-delay group (Sparaci et al., 2019).

Within developmental literature – and as indicated above – a child’s activity level, curiosity, and own initiative to interaction has been highlighted as important for future development not only in the motoric area but also in relation to language (Adolf & Franchak, 2016; Andalò et al., 2022). Tamis-LeMonda and colleagues (2001) could, on the other hand, show that parental responses to child utterances and gestures were more influential than child activity for when a child reached specific milestones (such as first 50 words, combinatorial speech, past tense, etc.). Parental speaking time has in recent big data-studies also been related to vocabulary size in children (Bergelson et al., 2023). 

In the present study we investigate if children with different language skills at 4 y o a, have different frequencies of motoric behavior (measured through gesture and touch behaviour) during their first year of life. In addition, we compare the parents of the two groups in regard to amount of verbalizations/vocalizations during the first year. We further address if the child’s touch and gesture behavior at 12 m o a predict their language level at 4 y o a. 

Data consists of 22 parent-child dyads recorded at 6, 9 and 12 m o a. Child gestures (deictic, emblem, show/offer, iconic, action, handle-object), child touch (comfort, stimulate, action), parental speaking time, and context (play object, play peekaboo, play singing, play book, play non-toy, other) was annotated and related to CDI measures at 48 m o a. The children are part of the MINT-data set (N=65) and were selected based on SCDI-measures at 4 years of age: 11 with high scores and 11 with low scores. Based on the developmental literature on motor development, the hypothesis is that children who early on are motorically active and prone to interaction with the parent through touch and gesture will also have an advantage language wise. 

To explore the two groups with high/low CDI, mixed effects model has been used to test for differences in various gesture and touch characteristics over time. For multiple comparisons Bonferroni adjustment was used. To identify factors that predict the odds of having high (or low) score on SCDI at 4 years of age, logistic regression was used.

The results show that there is a difference between the high and low SCDI-groups during the first year in their use of deictic and show/offer gestures. No other behavior significantly differentiated the groups. For both groups, emblem use and activity level (handle object + action object) increased during the first year. Amount of parental vocalization/verbalization, on the other hand, decreased for both groups and was significantly lower at 12 m o a, compared to at 6 and 9 m o a.  

Investigating the predictive power of early activity, 56 children at 12 m o a were included in the linear regression, including the group of high and low SCDI children. The results showed that Deictic gesture and Handle object, and amount of Parental vocalization significantly predict the children’s scores on SCDI at 4 y o a. Further, the child’s comfort touch was a negative predictor of SCDI at 4 y o a.

The findings are discussed in relation to prior studies of cascading effects – action, mobility, and language – and argue that interactional aspects – such as a child engaging in motoric interaction rather than motoric action seems to be a more promising venture for future research.