Teach your baby to communicate such words as hat, flower and fish by using simple gestures or "baby signs" and you may find you and your baby "talking" well before he or she can speak, according to a new book co-written by a UC Davis researcher. For hat, for example, pat the top of your head with your hand open and your palm down. "Such signs are an extension of what parents everywhere do when they teach their babies to wave bye-bye," says Linda Acredolo, a UC Davis psychology professor. In "Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk," Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn, a California State University, Stanislaus, professor, say that working with young children to help them communicate through such gestures can help both kids and parents. The signing accelerates the process of learning to talk, stimulates intellectual development, enhances self-esteem and strengthens the bond between parent and infant. In 10 years of research, Acredolo and Goodwyn have found that signing babies "scored higher in intelligence tests, understood more words, had larger vocabularies and engaged in more sophisticated play." The researchers found, for example, that 2-year-olds who used the baby signs knew about 50 more words than those children who had not learned to use specific gestures to communicate.