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The use of gestures, such as pointing, has been recognised as an important aspect of child development for some time. For example, the amount a child gestures at a young age predicts her later vocabulary size.

Rowe and Goldin-Meadow found that parents and children from poorer backgrounds (i.e. of low socioeconomic status) used a narrower range of gestures when they interacted with each other compared with parents and children from more affluent backgrounds.

Combining this observation with the earlier finding about the role of parental gesturing, implies but by no means proves, that one reason children from poor backgrounds develop smaller vocabularies is because their parents gestured to them less when they were younger.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) tend to stare at people's mouths rather than their eyes. Now, an NIH-funded study in 2-year-olds with the social deficit disorder suggests why they might find mouths so attractive: lip-sync—the exact match of lip motion and speech sound.

Such audiovisual synchrony preoccupied toddlers who have autism, while their unaffected peers focused on socially meaningful movements of the human body, such as gestures and facial expressions.

"Typically developing children pay special attention to human movement from very early in life, within days of being born. But in children with autism, even as old as two years, we saw no evidence of this," explained Ami Klin, Ph.D., of the Yale Child Study Center, who led the research. "Toddlers with autism are missing rich social information imparted by these cues, and this is likely to adversely affect the course of their development."