Gestures In Children Research Articles

A show of hands: Relations between young children’s gesturing and executive function.

This study brought together 2 literatures-gesturing and executive function-in order to examine the possible role of gesture in children's executive function. Children (N = 41) aged 2½-6 years performed a sorting-shift executive function task (Dimensional Change Card Sort). Responses of interest included correct sorting, response latency, spontaneous gestures, and verbal and gestural explanations for sorts. An examination of performance over trials permitted a fine-grained depiction of patterns of younger and older high gesturing versus low gesturing children. Relevant gesturing was positively associated with correct sorting, even more strongly than was age, and had its greatest impact right after the shift to a new relevant dimension. Generally high gesturers outperformed low gesturers even on trials in which the former did not gesture. Results were discussed in terms of theories of gesturing and of possible processes (e.g., scaffolding, adding a second representation) by which gestures might facilitate executive function, and vice versa. Possible preexisting differences between high and low gesturers also were considered. The findings open up a new avenue of research and theorizing about the possible role of gesturing in emerging executive function.

Aquisição dos gestos na comunicação pré-linguística: uma abordagem teórica

Com o objetivo de compreender as relações entre o gesto e a linguagem e a relevância do gesto no desenvolvimento de competências comunicativo-linguísticas foi realizada uma pesquisa da literatura nacional e internacional. A análise dos dados de múltiplas áreas científicas indica influências transversais do gesto natural na evolução da competência comunicativo-linguística do Homem. Assim, a identificação do sistema de neurónios-espelho promoveu o emergir de vários trabalhos que levantaram hipóteses sobre o paralelismo entre a evolução do gesto versus a evolução da linguagem. A literatura aponta que os gestos naturais possuem uma força preditiva no desenvolvimento da linguagem e ao longo de diferentes períodos influencia diversas componentes: pragmática, semântica e morfossintaxe. A influência do gesto natural para a competência comunicativa continua ao longo da vida, visto que o uso de gestos naturais simultâneos ao discurso possuem a função de desambiguar o conteúdo da mensagem para o interlocutor e de organizar o discurso ao emissor. O uso dos gestos naturais na promoção de competências comunicativo-linguísticas em crianças com perturbações da comunicação pré-linguística torna-se incontornável mas requer um aprofundamento de conhecimentos dado que os estudos relacionados com as competências pragmáticas iniciais direcionam-se sobretudo com o gesto de apontar. Outros estudos analisaram os gestos naturais na compreensão das relações com as componentes da semântica e morfossintaxe em idades mais tardias.

Movement analysis and EEG recordings in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy

Impaired hand function is often the most disabling symptom in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy (CP). Literature provides a wide number of studies dealing either with the kinematics or the cerebral correlates of the impairment. Nevertheless, few studies exist merging both aspects together. The aim of this study is the integrated analyses of time and spatial parameters of both the affected and less-affected sides and of the EEG signal, recorded during the movement execution, for the quantitative description of the pointing gesture in children with CP. The participants (pathological and control subjects) were asked to execute a pointing task simultaneously with the recording by an optoelectronic system and an electroencephalographer. Kinematic data were processed for the extraction of several synthetic indexes, to be correlated with parameters derived from frequency analysis of the electroencephalographic signal. Kinematic results showed statistical differences (1) between the affected and the less-affected arms in patients and (2) between the less-affected arm in patients and the normal arm in controls. Further differences were found in kinematics with respect to bilateral or ipsilateral motor control, extracted from EEG. Given the different behavior evidenced by either ipsilateral or contralateral reorganization, and considering the role of feedback and feed-forward contributions to motor programming, some hypotheses emerged about the motor control during pointing task in CP.

Altered integration of speech and gesture in children with autism spectrum disorders

The presence of gesture during speech has been shown to impact perception, comprehension, learning, and memory in normal adults and typically developing children. In neurotypical individuals, the impact of viewing co-speech gestures representing an object and/or action (i.e., iconic gesture) or speech rhythm (i.e., beat gesture) has also been observed at the neural level. Yet, despite growing evidence of delayed gesture development in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), few studies have examined how the brain processes multimodal communicative cues occurring during everyday communication in individuals with ASD. Here, we used a previously validated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm to examine the neural processing of co-speech beat gesture in children with ASD and matched controls. Consistent with prior observations in adults, typically developing children showed increased responses in right superior temporal gyrus and sulcus while listening to speech accompanied by beat gesture. Children with ASD, however, exhibited no significant modulatory effects in secondary auditory cortices for the presence of co-speech beat gesture. Rather, relative to their typically developing counterparts, children with ASD showed significantly greater activity in visual cortex while listening to speech accompanied by beat gesture. Importantly, the severity of their socio-communicative impairments correlated with activity in this region, such that the more impaired children demonstrated the greatest activity in visual areas while viewing co-speech beat gesture. These findings suggest that although the typically developing brain recognizes beat gesture as communicative and successfully integrates it with co-occurring speech, information from multiple sensory modalities is not effectively integrated during social communication in the autistic brain.

Mnemonic effect of iconic gesture and beat gesture in adults and children: Is meaning in gesture important for memory recall?

Abundant research has shown that encoding meaningful gesture, such as an iconic gesture, enhances memory. This paper asked whether gesture needs to carry meaning to improve memory recall by comparing the mnemonic effect of meaningful (i.e., iconic gestures) and nonmeaningful gestures (i.e., beat gestures). Beat gestures involve simple motoric movement produced along with the rhythm of the speech (e.g., hand with open palm flips outwards). Although beat gesture does not carry any semantic meaning, it serves a meta-cognitive function by marking the parts of speech that the speaker would like to emphasise. It also activates prosodic processing of the accompanying speech. We also asked whether the mnemonic effect of both types of gestures was found in both adults and children. In both experiments adults and 4–5-year-old children watched 3 different videos, each consisted of a list of 10 words (5 words for children), in 3 conditions (words accompanied by iconic gestures, words accompanied by beat gestures, and words not accompanied by gestures) and were asked to recall the words without moving their hands. Not surprisingly, encoding iconic gesture improved memory in both adults and children—they recalled more words when encoding them with iconic gestures than when encoding words alone. Interestingly, encoding beat gestures aided recall in adults, suggesting that both meaningful and nonmeaningful gestures could strengthen their memory. More importantly, adults recalled comparable number of words when encoding them with iconic gestures and beat gestures. However, such mnemonic effect of beat gesture was not found in children, suggesting that young children might not be sensitive to the meta-cognitive aspects of beat gesture.

The Changing Role of Gesture in Linguistic Development: A Developmental Trajectory and a Cross-Cultural Comparison Between British and Finnish Children

We studied how gesture use changes with culture, age and increased spoken language competence. A picture-naming task was presented to British (N =80) and Finnish (N =41) typically developing children aged 2-5years. British children were found to gesture more than Finnish children and, in both cultures, gesture production decreased after the age of two. Two-year-olds used more deictic than iconic gestures than older children, and gestured more before the onset of speech, rather than simultaneously or after speech. The British 3- and 5-year-olds gestured significantly more when naming praxic (manipulable) items than non-praxic items. Our results support the view that gesture serves a communicative and intrapersonal function, and the relative function may change with age. Speech and language therapists and psychologists observe the development of children's gestures and make predictions on the basis of their frequency and type. To prevent drawing erroneous conclusions about children's linguistic development, it is important to understand developmental and cultural variations in gesture use.

Infant signs as intervention? Promoting symbolic gestures for preverbal children in low-income families supports responsive parent–child relationships

Abstract Gestures are a natural form of communication between preverbal children and parents which support children's social and language development; however, low-income parents gesture less frequently, disadvantaging their children. In addition to pointing and waving, children are capable of learning many symbolic gestures, known as “infant signs,” if modeled by adults. The practice of signing with infants is increasingly popular in middle-income populations around the world, but has not been examined as an intervention to promote positive qualities of the parent–child relationship. This study tested whether an infant sign intervention (ISI) encouraging low-income parents to use symbolic gestures could enhance the parent–child relationship. A final sample of twenty-nine toddlers and their families were followed for 7 months after assignment to the ISI or a control group. Children and mothers in ISI group families used more symbolic gestures than those in control families. Mothers’ in the ISI group were more attuned to changes in children's affect and more responsive to children's distress cues. Mothers in the intervention group also viewed their children more positively, reducing parenting-related stress. This study provides evidence that a simple infant sign intervention is an effective tool to promote bidirectional communication and positive interactions for preverbal children and their parents.

The Pace of Vocabulary Growth Helps Predict Later Vocabulary Skill

Children vary widely in the rate at which they acquire words--some start slow and speed up, others start fast and continue at a steady pace. Do early developmental variations of this sort help predict vocabulary skill just prior to kindergarten entry? This longitudinal study starts by examining important predictors (socioeconomic status [SES], parent input, child gesture) of vocabulary growth between 14 and 46 months (n = 62) and then uses growth estimates to predict children's vocabulary at 54 months. Velocity and acceleration in vocabulary development at 30 months predicted later vocabulary, particularly for children from low-SES backgrounds. Understanding the pace of early vocabulary growth thus improves our ability to predict school readiness and may help identify children at risk for starting behind.

Contingent Interactions Between Parents and Young Children With Severe Expressive Communication Impairments

Parents and their children with severe expressive impairments may have limited successful communicative exchanges due to each partner’s difficulty in recognizing and responding to communicative behaviors of the other. This study examined the communicative functions and modes of communication that received contingent responses in 20 dyads of parents and young children with severe expressive impairments. Parents responded more often to children’s nonvocal behaviors and adult-directed behaviors than vocal behaviors and non-adult-directed behaviors (i.e., child gestures or vocal behaviors that were not conveyed toward the direction of the adult). The children responded more often to parent communication about goal-directed than non-goal-directed tasks. Implications of these results for communication intervention are discussed.

Head nodding and head shaking gestures in children’s early communication

Children’s spontaneous head nodding and head shaking gestures are examined in the context of mother-child play. Observations at 14, 20 and 32 months show that frequency of head gestures increases with age, with a pronounced increase in nodding between 20 and 32 months. Over time, children increasingly use head gestures in combination with speech, though isolated head nods continue to predominate at 32 months. Pragmatic analysis of children’s head gestures reveals that they serve a small set of communicative functions during early childhood. Children’s use of a head gesture for communication at 14 months was a significant predictor of pragmatic flexibility at 32 months, even when controlling for 14-month language production and maternal language input. The significance of head gestures in children’s emerging communication is discussed.

How many bees? How many flies?

Descriptive narratives and teacher reflections highlight children's mathematical thinking and learning. Watching children's actions and gestures, as well as listening to their mathematical conversations as they work, gives adults insight about interesting strategies, alternative representations, and sources of difficulty.

Early vocabulary and gestures in Estonian children

Parents of 592 children between the age of 0 ; 8 and 1 ; 4 completed the Estonian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (ECDI Infant Form). The relationships between comprehension and production of different categories of words and gestures were examined. According to the results of regression modelling the production of object gestures and gestural routines was positively correlated with the use of all the word categories. Comprehension of common nouns was positively correlated to the production of common nouns and predicates, whereas the comprehension of predicates was negatively correlated to the production of common nouns and social terms. The older the children were the more they produced words from each category. Girls were reported to produce more social terms. First-born children had an advantage over later-born children in the production of common nouns. Maternal educational level was associated with the production of common nouns and predicates.

I hear what you say but I see what you mean: The role of gestures in children's pragmatic comprehension

This study investigated whether gesture can enhance the pragmatic comprehension of language impaired children. Language impaired children (N=21) and age matched typically developing children (N=26) were presented verbal scenarios in two conditions: speech only and speech+gesture. In the speech+gesture condition, speech was accompanied by iconic gestures which conveyed relevant semantic information complimentary to the spoken message. Children were asked questions about each scenario that required them to make inferences beyond what was explicitly stated. All children answered more questions correctly when verbal scenarios were accompanied by gesture, however, this difference was only significant for language impaired children. To examine whether children integrated the information conveyed by gesture into their representation of the spoken message, we analysed the gestures children produced as they answered the questions. Children gestured more when they were verbalising correct inferences than incorrect ones. Furthermore, children, especially those with specific language impairment, produced the same gestures that they observed and were more likely to do so in correct rather than incorrect answers. Gestures make a crucial contribution to an utterance's meaning, helping children, especially those with a language impairment to understand speech that requires meaning to be inferred.

Pointing gesture in young children

This paper provides an overview of recent studies that have investigated the development of pointing behaviors in infants and toddlers. First, we focus on deictic gestures and their role in language development, taking into account the different hand shapes and the different functions of pointing, and examining the cognitive abilities that may or may not be associated with the production of pointing gestures. Second, we try to demonstrate that when a distinction is made between pointing gestures and manipulative activities, the study of children’s hand preference can help to highlight the development of speech-gesture links.

Gesture and multimodal development

1. About the authors 3. Introduction 4. Gesture and multimodal development (by Guidetti, Michele) 5. Articles 6. Pointing gesture in young children: Hand preference and language development (by Cochet, Helene) 7. Support or competition?: Dynamic development of the relationship between manual pointing and symbolic gestures from 6 to 18 months of age (by Vallotton, Claire D.) 8. From gesture to sign and from gesture to word: Pointing in deaf and hearing children (by Morgenstern, Aliyah) 9. How the hands control attention during early word learning (by Rader, Nancy de Villiers) 10. Infant movement as a window into language processing (by Fais, Laurel) 11. Children's lexical skills and task demands affect gestural behavior in mothers of late-talking children and children with typical language development (by Grimminger, Angela) 12. The type of shared activity shapes caregiver and infant communication (by Puccini, Daniel) 13. Transcribing and annotating multimodality: How deaf children's productions call into the question the analytical tools (by Millet, Agnes) 14. Mathematical learning and gesture: Character viewpoint and observer viewpoint in students' gestured graphs of functions (by Gerofsky, Susan)

Conversational gestures in autism spectrum disorders: Asynchrony but not decreased frequency

Conversational or "co-speech" gestures play an important role in communication, facilitating turntaking, providing visuospatial information, clarifying subtleties of emphasis, and other pragmatic cues. Consistent with other pragmatic language deficits, individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are said to produce fewer conversational gestures, as specified in many diagnostic measures. Surprisingly, while research shows fewer deictic gestures in young children with ASD, there is a little empirical evidence addressing other forms of gesture. The discrepancy between clinical and empirical observations may reflect impairments unrelated to frequency, such as gesture quality or integration with speech. Adolescents with high-functioning ASD (n = 15), matched on age, gender, and IQ to 15 typically developing (TD) adolescents, completed a narrative task to assess the spontaneous production of speech and gesture. Naïve observers rated the stories for communicative quality. Overall, the ASD group's stories were rated as less clear and engaging. Although utterance and gesture rates were comparable, the ASD group's gestures were less closely synchronized with the co-occurring speech, relative to control participants. This gesture-speech synchrony specifically impacted communicative quality across participants. Furthermore, while story ratings were associated with gesture count in TD adolescents, no such relationship was observed in adolescents with ASD, suggesting that gestures do not amplify communication in this population. Quality ratings were, however, correlated with ASD symptom severity scores, such that participants with fewer ASD symptoms were rated as telling higher quality stories. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of communication and neuropsychological functioning in ASD.

Le rôle des gestes dans la création et l’acquisition du langage

Imagine a child who has never seen or heard language. Would such a child be able to invent a language? Despite what one might guess, the answer is "yes". This chapter describes children who are congenitally deaf and cannot learn the spoken language that surrounds them. In addition, the children have not been exposed to sign language, either by their hearing parents or their oral schools. Nevertheless, the children use their hands to communicate--they gesture--and those gestures take on many of the forms and functions of language (Goldin-Meadow 2003a). The properties of language that we find in these gestures are just those properties that do not need to be handed down from generation to generation, but can be reinvented by a child de novo. They are the resilient properties of language, properties that all children, deaf or hearing, come to language-learning ready to develop. In contrast to these deaf children who are inventing language with their hands, hearing children are learning language from a linguistic model. But they too produce gestures, as do all hearing speakers (Feyereisen and de Lannoy 1991; Goldin-Meadow 2003b; Kendon 1980; McNeill 1992). Indeed, young hearing children often use gesture to communicate before they use words. Interestingly, changes in a child's gestures not only predate but also predict changes in the child's early language, suggesting that gesture may be playing a role in the language-learning process. This chapter begins with a description of the gestures the deaf child produces without speech. These gestures assume the full burden of communication and take on a language-like form--they are language. This phenomenon stands in contrast to the gestures hearing speakers produce with speech. These gestures share the burden of communication with speech and do not take on a language-like form--they are part of language.

Symbols Build Communication and Thought: The Role of Gestures and Words in the Development of Engagement Skills and Social‐emotional Concepts during Toddlerhood

Social skills and symbol skills are positively associated in middle childhood, but the relation between these domains is less clear in newly verbal toddlers. Vygotsky (1934/1986) proposed that symbols are both tools for interaction and mental tools for thought. Do symbols help even very young children build skills for interacting with and conceptualizing the social world? Longitudinal data from 108 children and mothers were collected when children were 14, 24, and 36 months. Children's gestures and words during mother-child interactions were used as symbol skill indicators to predict children's abilities to engage others and the number of social-emotional concepts children portray during play. In a series of growth models, words had a stronger effect on engagement skills while early gesture use predicted later development of social-emotional concepts. Therefore, even in early development, symbols serve as both communication tools and mental tools to construct understanding of the social-emotional world.

Efectos de los gestos icónicos en la memoria de trabajo de estudiantes con discapacidad intelectual leve

ResumenSe presentan los resultados de un estudio sobre la influencia del gesto icónico en la memoria de trabajo en estudiantes con discapacidad intelectual leve. Cómo hipótesis general se planteó que la retención de la información verbal en la memoria de trabajo variaría en función del uso de gestos en niños/as con discapacidad intelectual leve, donde el gesto congruente con la expresión verbal facilitaría dichos procesos de memoria. Vara probarlo, se realizó un estudio experimental con 120 niños/as con discapacidad intelectual leve, que asistían al nivel básico en escuelas especiales y de plan común. Los resultados indican la existencia de diferencias significativas (p < 0.05) en el recuerdo inmediato del gesto asociado al discurso verbal. Los niños recordaban más palabras y frases si se presentaba un gesto congruente. Se concluyó que los gestos congruentes facilitan las tareas de memoria, considerándose crucial el lenguaje no verbal en los contextos de aprendizaje.

What gestures reveal about how semantic distinctions develop in Dutch children's placement verbs

Placement verbs describe every-day events like putting a toy in a box. Dutch uses two semi-obligatory caused posture verbs (leggen ‘lay’ and zetten ‘set/stand’) to distinguish between events based on whether the located object is placed horizontally or vertically. Although prevalent in the input, these verbs cause Dutch children difficulties even at age five (Narasimhan and Gullberg, accepted). Children overextend leggen to all placement events and underextend the use of zetten. This study examines what gestures can reveal about Dutch three- and five-year-olds' semantic representations of such verbs. The results show that children gesture differently from adults in this domain. Three-year-olds express only the path of the caused motion, whereas five-year-olds, like adults, also incorporate the located object. Crucially, gesture patterns are tied to verb use: those children who over-use leggen ‘lay’ for all placement events only gesture about path. Conversely, children who use the two verbs differentially for horizontal and vertical placement also incorporate objects in gestures like adults. We argue that children's gestures reflect their current knowledge of verb semantics, and indicate a developmental transition from a system with a single semantic component—(caused) movement—to an (adult-like) focus on two semantic components—(caused) movement-and-object.