The high dimensionality of caregiver-child communication: A commentary on Karadöller, Sümer, and Özyürek

Karadöller, Sümer, and Özyürek are doing an important service to the field by emphasizing multimodality in young children’s language learning. They integrate research on speech, gesture, and sign to highlight the independent and combined influence of these modalities on how children learn to communicate. In this commentary, we call for scientists to further broaden the study of natural caregiver-child communication by encompassing a dynamic set of interacting signals that facilitate complex information exchange.