Infant Signing Symposium at SRCD?

[Claire Vallotton]

Hello Infant Sign Scholars,

Do any of you have interest in being part of a symposium at the next
SRCD conference (Society for Research on Child Development)? The
conference will be April 2-4, 2009 in Denver Colorado.
The deadline for proposals is August 22 for posters and August 29 for
all other proposals.
http://www.srcd.org/biennial.html

There are many different directions we could go with a symposium, so I
thought I'd see who is interested and what kinds of results/ideas
you'd like to present, and go from there to put together a cohesive
proposal. I'm willing to chair the symposium, but also willing to hand
over the Chair-ship to someone else if anyone wants it.

The study I'd like to present investigates whether there is a
competitive or supportive relationship between conventional gestures
(pointing, waving, etc.) and infant signs. However, I have two other
options as well: 1) I am also putting together a case study on
"becoming representational", examining the development of one infant
from first gestures to first signs, through first words, sentences,
etc. 2) Finally, I am also putting together a piece on infants' use of
signs as "self-talk", infants' signing by themselves, and also using
signs as self-regulatory symbols.

SRCD review committees like to see data, it's best if you can write
about results you already have for the proposal (even if they are
pilot results), rather than projected/planned results.

Please let me know if you're interested. I'd like to submit a proposal
by late July as I will be in conferences and meetings from July 30 to
August 23rd.

~Claire