The ontogeny of child-directed communication: Toddlers accommodate their gesturing to partner age.

= 923 tokens) and then focused on peer-directed gestures to assess whether toddlers adjusted gestural communication when addressing younger or older peers. Toddlers adjusted the complexity and temporal patterns of their gesturing to their recipient's age but did not change gesture prominence. Contrary to typical child-directed communication patterns, toddlers used a more diverse set with shorter gestures toward peers as compared with adults. However, within their peer group, toddlers communicated with younger peers at a slower pace and used a simpler set of gestures, in line with typical linguistic child-directed communication patterns. Our findings suggest that our ability to accommodate communication emerges before language is fully developed and is present in our use of prelinguistic gestures to partners of different ages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).