ABSTRACT
Gestural communication involves comprehension and production of visual-manual signals and multimodal integration mechanisms. Several presentations of current research on early cognitive development begin with a quotation of William James who considered that in its first stages, knowledge is still chaotic and that babies experience their surrounding world with a "blooming buzzing confusion". The observation of neonates revealed a great variety of finger movements which constitute what the investigators called a "manual vocabulary". Symbolic gestures such as shrugging and arm raising to mean "gone" are gradually decontextualized and may refer to an absent object. A majority of studies on language acquisition concerns the earliest years. Language continues to develop in several areas: vocabulary growth, syntactic complexity, narrative skills, metalinguistic competence, and mastery of genres and registers. The development of communication is characterized by a great inter-individual variability and the diagnostic of autism is uncertain until 3 years of age.
