Baby Talk: Interpreting Baby Sign Language

The article I read was on using sign language with infants who have not yet developed verbal skills. The article is by Stacy Downs, for the Democrat Herald, and can be seen here: http://www.dhonline.com/articles/2007/09/29/lifestyles/healthy_living/fit01.txt . I found this article really interesting, because it's showing that babies are learning a form of communication at a much earlier stage than is traditional. This means, firstly, that they are linking concepts to expressions at an early stage, which could probably mean that they are developing an understanding of objects around them at an earlier age.
There are a lot of other potential benefits from being able to communicate through sign language. Because babies have a form of expression of their wants that is interpretable to adults, that means that their wants are more easily satisfied. In a Pavlovian sense, the sign language allows them to develop a more complex stimulus-response mechanism than crying, which may allow them to develop an understanding of communicating as a two-way, multifaceted process. Because communication is facilitated, babies may grow up to be more content, as they have a means of acquiring what they want. This contentness could possibly make children more well-adjusted, as well as more easily able to communicate their needs when they are older.
Another possible effect of using sign language at an early stage is that children may develop biases, attitudes, or preconceptions towards the nouns they can voice. This may attach the idea of the sign in their minds with the idea of the noun, a connection that could last into adulthood. It also may disconnect the idea of the word itself somewhat from the noun.
Because baby sign language only relates to nouns, learning it also means that their language is developed free of relations between nouns and ideas. For instance, the idea of milk can be closely connected to that of cows, of farming, of breakfast, or of adjectives such as rancid or milky, which in turn can be connected mentally to other nouns. Without such a complex language, babies develop a concept of nouns independent from their associations with other words and ideas. Baby talk is obviously a more neutral language in this respect.
Finally, the article and wikipedia entry point out a problem with baby sign language. A concern is that teaching babies sign language will slow their learning of actual language. It has been shown that infants who learn to languages are slower to utilize verbal abilities. Thus, infants might resort to more familiar sign language terms instead of using actual language. However, as baby sign language is a relatively new concept, it is too early to concretely determine the effects that it has on infants.

Here's the wikipedia article on Baby Signing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_sign
And here's the official website: http://www.signingbaby.com/main/