Claire Vallotton, Project Director

Coming from the study of very early childhood, I see the activity of reading as an elaborate form of representation. I study the roots of reading as children begin to form their first mental representations and to symbolize those concepts through gestures. These gestural representations get elaborated and generalized such that children use gestures to represent the same idea as seen live, in a picture book, or in their own mind. For example, an infant may use a sign for “dog” when she sees a live dog, sees a picture of dog, hears a dog bark, hears the word “dog,” or spontaneously decides she wants to go outside to see the dog.

When infants and toddlers have tools for representation in the form of infant signs, they have a way to actively engage the world of people and objects with symbols. They gain early entrance into the world of active representation, using and even creating signs to represent and communicate their observations, needs, wants, thoughts, and feelings. They actively engage in representing and constructing their own knowledge of the world, with or without an adult interaction partner. Infants who use signs can be observed to sit “reading” a picture book by themselves, signing to themselves the concepts on each page.

Special populations of interest include very young dual-language learners and children with developmental delays in the areas of language and communication.

"Celia tells her mother about the 'Elephant' in the book."

"Celia signs 'Monkey' - a picture on the cover of a book - as she chooses what she will read next."

"Celia signs 'Pig' as she reads to herself."