Type of iconicity influences children’s comprehension of gesture

Abstract

Children produce iconic gestures conveying action information earlier than the ones conveying attribute information (Özçalışkan, Gentner, & Goldin-Meadow, 2014). In this study, we ask whether children’s comprehension of iconic gestures follows a similar pattern, also with earlier comprehension of iconic gestures conveying action. Children, ages 2–4years, were presented with 12 minimally-informative speech+iconic gesture combinations, conveying either an action (e.g., open palm flapping as if bird flying) or an attribute (e.g., fingers spread as if bird’s wings) associated with a referent. They were asked to choose the correct match for each gesture in a forced-choice task. Our results showed that children could identify the referent of an iconic gesture conveying characteristic action earlier (age 2) than the referent of an iconic gesture conveying characteristic attribute (age 3). Overall, our study identifies ages 2–3 as important in the development of comprehension of iconic co-speech gestures, and indicates that the comprehension of iconic gestures with action meanings is easier than, and may even precede, the comprehension of iconic gestures with attribute meanings.