Temperament is important to consider when investigating
factors influencing communicative development in infancy.
Existing research supporting the assumption that temperament and verbal language development are interrelated
covers mainly verbal development in toddlerhood onward,
but few studies focus on these relations in infancy. The
present study of 91 infants from a general population pregnancy cohort in Finland used parent reports to investigate
associations between temperament and the development
of preverbal gesturing and receptive vocabulary in infancy.
We found that infant temperament explained a substantially larger proportion of the variance in expressive communicative gesturing compared to receptive vocabulary.
High Duration of orienting and Soothability, indicators of
orienting/regulation capacity, and higher positive emotionality were found to be favourable for the use of communicative gestures. These temperament characteristics might
promote interaction and thus advance communicative
development. Knowledge on associations between infant
temperament and communicative development is important
in supporting outcomes in children with temperament characteristics possibly less favourable for communication
development.