• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.1-25
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among infants' nonverbal communication, maternal verbal behaviors and the infants' acquisition of vocabulary. The subjects were 93 pairs of 10 to 18 months old infants and their mothers residing in the Seoul and GyeongGi-Do area. The results were as follows : (1) In terms of the infants' nonverbal communicative means, it appeared that the group of 16~18 month olds utilized more gesture and vocalization. As regards the infants' nonverbal communicative functions in terms of social behavior and joint attention, the group of 16~18 month olds was found to perform more of the behaviors from this category than the other groups. There was a significant difference in the maternal verbal behavior among the different age groups. (2) Among the infants' nonverbal communicative means, gesture and vocalization, there appeared to be a significant relationship between vocalization and the infants' acquisition of vocabulary. In addition, there was an important relationship between the high usage of infants' nonverbal communicative functions with behavior regulation and the high usage of joint attention and the successful acquisition of vocabulary among infants. (3) Social play, which is a maternal verbal behavior categorized as one of the strategies for getting infants' attention, was significantly related to the acquisition of infants' vocabulary. (4) When mothers used more imitating sounds and mimetic words, requests for information, descriptions, conventional social expressions, and imitation to enhance responsiveness, infants were found to have acquired a larger vocabulary.