28 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Sign Language May Boost Cognition in Children by 50 Percent
Gestures and speech used similar neural circuits as they developed in our evolutionary history. University of Chicago psycholinguist David McNeill was the first to suggest this. He thought nonverbal and verbal skills might retain their strong ties even though they’ve diverged into separate behavioral spheres. He was right. Studies confirmed it with a puzzling finding: People who could no longer move their limbs after a brain injury also increasingly lost their ability to communicate verball...Folksonomies: parenting child development
Folksonomies: parenting child development
Children who learned the form of communication in the first grade performed 50 percent better on a series of cognitive tests.