A new study has found that gesturing at 18 months (but not early speech) predicted which children with pre- or perinatal brain lesions had vocabulary delays a year later. The results suggest that gesture may be a tool for diagnosing persistent language delay in such children. This research is important because about 1 in 4,000 infants has this type of brain injury, and intervention early in development may be critical to successful remediation of language delay.