Gestural Abilities Research Articles

Task-related differences in the gesture production of young autistic children.

In typically developing (TD) children, gesture emerges around 9months of age, allowing children to communicate prior to speech. Due to the important role gesture plays in the early communication of autistic and TD children, various tasks have been used to assess gesture ability. However, few data exist on whether and how tasks differentially elicit gesture, particularly for samples of racially and ethnically diverse autistic children. In this study, we explored if task (a naturalistic parent-child interaction [NPCI]; structured assessment of child communication) differentially elicited rate or type of gesture production for young autistic children. This secondary analysis included baseline data from 80 racially and ethnically diverse autistic children aged 18-59months who participated in one of two larger studies. Video recordings of NPCIs and an assessment of child communication with standardised administration procedures were collected at baseline. Child gesture rate (number of gestures produced per 10min) and type were extracted from these recordings and analysed. The structured assessment elicited more gestures than the NPCI. In terms of gesture type, points, gives, and reaches accounted for 76% of child gestures. Points (which are developmentally more advanced than reaches and gives) were produced at the highest rates within book exploration. Distal points (which are more developmentally advanced than proximal or contact points) were produced at the highest rates when children were tempted to request. Our findings indicate elicitation tasks differentially elicit type and rate of gesture for young autistic children. To assess the gesture production of young autistic children, a structured task designed to elicit child requests will probe the developmental sophistication of the child's gesture repertoire, eliciting both the most gestures and the most developmentally advanced gestures. What is already known on the subject Because of the importance of gesture in early communication for autistic and typically developing children, various tasks have been used to assess it. However, little is known about whether tasks differentially elicit type or rate of gesture for young autistic children from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. What this paper adds to existing knowledge Elicitation tasks differentially elicit type and rate of gesture for young autistic children in the early stages of gesture. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? We recommend a structured task designed to elicit child requests to assess the developmental sophistication of a child's gesture repertoire.

Communicative development inventory in type 1 and presymptomatic infants with spinal muscular atrophy: a cohort study

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to assess early language acquisitions in treated individuals with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 1 and in infants identified by newborn screening (NBS).MethodsParents of...

Looking at gesture: The reciprocal influence between gesture and conversation

IntroductionThere is limited research in group communication treatment for people with aphasia but existing studies report benefits of gesture to support conversation. Gesture supports conversation through recipient design features and reducing linguistic demands of lexical retrieval and formulation. Additionally, gesture serves an affiliative function. However, the relationship between gesture use and gestural capacity has not been widely examined. As part of a larger study on group cohesiveness and conversation, this investigation examined the patterns of co-speech gesture within authentic conversations among persons with aphasia to discern the functions of gesture use for the participants, changes in the use of gesture over time, and the relationship between gesture use and gesture ability. MethodsConversation Analysis (CA) was applied in an embedded case-study design. Three participants received an academic semester of group and individual conversation-based treatment according to Facilitating Authentic Conversation (Damico et al., 2015). Four conversations from the treatment were selected and transcribed for multi-modality communication with CA conventions applied, and then cyclically analysed for patterns of gesture. ResultsParticipants demonstrated gesture that served social and linguistic functions: ratifying clinicians’ proxy turns, turn-allocation, turn repair, relaying novel visual information, emphasizing content, demonstrating affiliation with the prior speaker, demonstrating their assessment others’ talk, and demonstrating humor. All three participants showed an increased rate of gesture per turn and increasingly used gesture to repair conversation breakdown. Increased gesture use over the course of the semester coincided with increased scores for pantomime on the Porch Index of Communicative Ability (Porch, 1981, PICA). ConclusionIndividuals with aphasia demonstrated increased use of gesture for varied purposes and improved gestural processing following a semester of conversation-based treatment. This is significant because gesture is an effective support for the repair of conversation breakdown typical of persons with aphasia.

Shared and distinct routes in speech and gesture imitation: Evidence from stroke

Dual-route models of high-level (praxis) actions distinguish between an “indirect” semantic route mediating meaningful gesture imitation, and a “direct” sensory-motor route mediates meaningless gesture imitation. Similarly, dual-route language models distinguish between an indirect route mediating production and repetition of words, and a direct route mediating non-word repetition. Although aphasia and limb apraxia frequently co-occur following left-hemisphere cerebrovascular accident (LCVA), it is unclear which aspects of these functional-neuroanatomic dual-route architectures are shared across praxis and language domains. This study focused on gesture imitation to test the hypothesis that semantic information (and portions of the indirect route) are shared across domains, whereas two distinct dorsal routes mediate sensory-motor mapping. Forty chronic LCVA and 17 neurotypical controls completed semantic memory and language tasks and imitated 3 types of gesture stimuli: (1) labeled/“named” meaningful, (2) unnamed meaningful, and (3) meaningless gestures. The comparison of accuracy between meaningless versus unnamed meaningful gestures examined the benefits of semantic information, while the comparison of unnamed meaningful versus named meaningful imitation examined additional benefits of linguistic cueing. Mixed-effects models examined group by task interaction effects on gesture ability. We found that for patients with LCVA, unnamed meaningful gestures were imitated more accurately than meaningless gestures, suggesting that semantic information was beneficial, but there was no benefit of labeling. Reduced benefit of semantic information on gesture accuracy was associated with lesions to inferior frontal and posterior temporal regions as well as semantic memory performance on a pictorial (non-gesture) task. In contrast, there was no relationship between meaningless gesture imitation and nonword repetition, indicating that measures of direct route performance are not associated across language and action. These results provide preliminary evidence that portions of the indirect semantic route are shared across the language and action domains, while two direct sensory-motor mapping routes mediate word repetition and gesture imitation.

Early predictors of language skills at 3 years of age vary based on diagnostic outcome: A baby siblings research consortium study.

While previous work has identified the early predictors of language skills in infants at elevated familial risk (ER) and low familial risk (LR) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), no studies to date have explored whether these predictors vary based on diagnostic outcome of ASD or no ASD. The present study used a large, multisite dataset to examine associations between a set of commonly studied predictor variables (infant gesture abilities, fine motor skills, nonverbal cognition, and maternal education level), measured at 12 months, and language skills, measured at 3 years, across three diagnostic outcome groups-infants with ASD ("ASD"), ER infants without ASD ("ER-no ASD"), and LR infants without ASD ("LR-no ASD"). Findings revealed that the predictors of language skills differed across groups, as gesture abilities were positively associated with language skills in the ER-no ASD group but negatively associated with language skills in the ASD group. Furthermore, maternal education level was positively associated with language skills in the ASD and LR-no ASD groups only. Variability in these early predictors may help explain why language skills are heterogeneous across the autism spectrum, and, with further study, may help clinicians identify those in need of additional and/or specialized intervention services that support language development. LAY SUMMARY: The present study identified predictors of language skills in infants with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Maternal education level and 12-month gesture abilities predicted 3-year language skills in infants with ASD. Measuring these predictors early in life may help identify infants and families in need of additional and/or specialized intervention services that support language development.

Gesture Development in Chinese-Speaking Preschool Children With Autism and the Roles of Parental Input and Child-Based Factors.

Children with autism are found to have delayed and heterogeneous gesture abilities. It is important to understand the growth of gesture abilities and the underlying factors affecting its growth. Addressing these issues can help to design effective intervention programs. Thirty-five Chinese-speaking preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (M age = 4.89 years, SD = 0.91; four girls) participated in four play sessions with their parents over 9 months. Their child-based factors including autism severity, intellectual functioning, and expressive language abilities were assessed. The gestures (deictic, iconic, and conventional) of the children and their parents were coded. Growth curve analyses were conducted to examine individual growth trajectories and the roles of child-based factors and parental input in shaping the children's gesture development. Child-based factors and parental input predicted gesture development differently. Parents' gestures positively predicted their children's gestures of the same type. Autism severity negatively predicted iconic and conventional gestures. Overall growth was found in deictic rather than iconic and conventional gestures. Subgroup variation was also found. Specifically, children with better expressive language ability showed a decrease in deictic gestures. An increase in iconic and conventional gestures was found in children with more severe autism and those with poorer expressive language ability and intellectual functioning, respectively. Different types of gestures may have different growth trajectories and be predicted by different child-based factors. Particular attention should be given to children who never produced iconic gestures, which is more challenging and may not develop over a short period, and hence require direct instruction.

Oral Motor and Gesture Abilities Independently Associated With Preschool Language Skill: Longitudinal and Concurrent Relationships at 21 Months and 3-4 Years.

Purpose Early motor abilities (gesture, oral motor, and gross/fine skills) are related to language abilities, and this is not due to an association with cognitive or symbolic abilities: Oral motor skills are uniquely associated with language abilities at 21 months of age. It is important to determine whether this motor-language relationship continues beyond the earliest stage of language development to understand language acquisition better and better predict which children may have lasting language difficulties. Method In this longitudinal study, we assessed language comprehension and production, oral motor skill, gross/fine motor skill, and meaningless manual gesture at ages 3 years (N = 89) and 4 years (N = 71), comparing the contribution of motor skill and earlier (at 21 months of age) language ability. We also examined covariates: nonverbal cognitive ability, socioeconomic status, and stimulation in the home as measured on the Home Screening Questionnaire. Results Motor abilities continue to have a significant relationship with language abilities independent of other factors in the preschool years. Meaningless manual gesture ability, gross/fine motor skill, and oral motor skill were still associated with language skill at 3 years of age; these relationships are not explained by the contribution of cognitive abilities or earlier language abilities. Conclusions Relationships between early motor skill and language development persist into preschool years and are not explained by other cognitive or home factors, nor by a relationship with earlier language ability. This finding should lead to a better understanding of the origins of language abilities.

Gesture helps learners learn, but not merely by guiding their visual attention.

Teaching a new concept through gestures-hand movements that accompany speech-facilitates learning above-and-beyond instruction through speech alone (e.g., Singer & Goldin-Meadow, ). However, the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are still under investigation. Here, we use eye tracking to explore one often proposed mechanism-gesture's ability to direct visual attention. Behaviorally, we replicate previous findings: Children perform significantly better on a posttest after learning through Speech+Gesture instruction than through Speech Alone instruction. Using eye tracking measures, we show that children who watch a math lesson with gesture do allocate their visual attention differently from children who watch a math lesson without gesture-they look more to the problem being explained, less to the instructor, and are more likely to synchronize their visual attention with information presented in the instructor's speech (i.e., follow along with speech) than children who watch the no-gesture lesson. The striking finding is that, even though these looking patterns positively predict learning outcomes, the patterns do not mediate the effects of training condition (Speech Alone vs. Speech+Gesture) on posttest success. We find instead a complex relation between gesture and visual attention in which gesture moderates the impact of visual looking patterns on learning-following along with speech predicts learning for children in the Speech+Gesture condition, but not for children in the Speech Alone condition. Gesture's beneficial effects on learning thus come not merely from its ability to guide visual attention, but also from its ability to synchronize with speech and affect what learners glean from that speech.

How do gestures influence thinking and speaking? The gesture-for-conceptualization hypothesis.

People spontaneously produce gestures during speaking and thinking. The authors focus here on gestures that depict or indicate information related to the contents of concurrent speech or thought (i.e., representational gestures). Previous research indicates that such gestures have not only communicative functions, but also self-oriented cognitive functions. In this article, the authors propose a new theoretical framework, the gesture-for-conceptualization hypothesis, which explains the self-oriented functions of representational gestures. According to this framework, representational gestures affect cognitive processes in 4 main ways: gestures activate, manipulate, package, and explore spatio-motoric information for speaking and thinking. These four functions are shaped by gesture's ability to schematize information, that is, to focus on a small subset of available information that is potentially relevant to the task at hand. The framework is based on the assumption that gestures are generated from the same system that generates practical actions, such as object manipulation; however, gestures are distinct from practical actions in that they represent information. The framework provides a novel, parsimonious, and comprehensive account of the self-oriented functions of gestures. The authors discuss how the framework accounts for gestures that depict abstract or metaphoric content, and they consider implications for the relations between self-oriented and communicative functions of gestures. (PsycINFO Database Record

Gestural development of chimpanzees in the wild: the impact of interactional experience

To understand the complexity involved in animal signalling, studies have mainly focused on repertoire size and information conveyed in vocalizations of birds and nonhuman primates. However, recent studies on gestural abilities of nonhuman primates have shown that we also need a detailed understanding of other communicative modalities and underlying cognitive skills to grasp this phenomenon in detail. Here, we thus examined gestural signalling of chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, living in two communities in the wild (Kanyawara, Uganda; Tai South, Cote d'Ivoire) with a special focus on the influence of the social environment on signal development. Specifically, we investigated to what extent specific social factors, namely behavioural context, interaction rates and maternal proximity, affect gestural production (i.e. gesture frequency, sequences and repertoire size). We used a combination of video recordings and focal scans obtained from 11 infants aged between 9 and 69 months during 1145 h of observation throughout two consecutive field periods. Overall, we found that social play was the context in which the highest number of gestures occurred. While gesture frequency and repertoire size increased with higher interaction rates with nonmaternal conspecifics and the number of previous interaction partners, no effect was found for interaction rates with mothers. Our results thus imply that infants of social mothers may have a head start in life. Moreover, we provide hitherto undocumented evidence for sex differences in gestural signalling, which may reflect the differential importance of early socialization for chimpanzee males and females. Gestural development thus relies heavily on interactional experiences with conspecifics, which adds support for gestural acquisition via the learning mechanism of ‘social negotiation’ in great apes.

Gesture Use in 14-Month-Old Toddlers With Hearing Loss and Their Mothers' Responses.

This study examined the gesture use of 14-month-old toddlers with hearing loss (HL) and mothers' responses to children's early gesture use. Comparisons were made to symbolic language and to dyads in which the toddler had normal hearing (NH). Participants were 25 mother-toddler dyads in which the child had HL and a socioeconomic-status matched group of 23 mother-toddler dyads in which the child had NH. Thirty-minute mother-child interactions were video-recorded, transcribed for spoken language, sign, and gesture use, and coded for maternal responses to children's gestures. Mothers also reported on children's gestural and spoken language abilities. Toddlers with HL used gesture similarly to their peers with NH, but demonstrated delays in spoken language. Spoken language and gesture were not significantly related for either group. Hearing levels were related to spoken language, but not gesture for the HL group. Maternal and child gesture were only related for signing mothers. Mothers of children with HL were more likely than their counterparts to provide no response to children's gestures. Although toddlers' gesture abilities remain intact in the presence of HL, mothers were not maximally responsive to those gestures and thus should be coached to increase their provision of contingent feedback.

Patterns of Gesture Use in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The purpose of this study was to examine patterns of spontaneous gesture use in a sample of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thirty-five adolescents with ASD ages 11 to 16 years participated (mean age = 13.51 years; 29 boys, 6 girls). Participants' spontaneous speech and gestures produced during a narrative task were later coded from videotape. Parents were also asked to complete questionnaires to quantify adolescents' general communication ability and autism severity. No significant subgroup differences were apparent between adolescents who did not gesture versus those who produced at least 1 gesture in general communication ability and autism severity. Subanalyses including only adolescents who produced gesture indicated a statistically significant negative association between gesture rate and general communication ability, specifically speech and syntax subscale scores. Adolescents who gestured produced higher proportions of iconic gestures and used gesture mostly to add information to speech. The findings relate spontaneous gesture use to underlying strengths and weaknesses in adolescents' speech and syntactical language development. More research examining cospeech gesture in fluent speakers with ASD is needed.

LEARNING AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS. RESEARCH PROJECT

This article is the result of a research project conducted during five months with university students from the degree in Primary Education at the University of Malaga. Due to their deficient command over the oral and gestural expressions and looking for the improvement of their communicative competences, several activities were proposed. For example: topic presentations, expositions, role- playing and workshops; in addition to improvisation playing and development of activities related to diverse didactic contexts. Along this research, we create and validate the test used by the students for their self-evaluation. Through it we could know their level of acquisition and improvement of the oral and gestural abilities.

Gestural abilities of children with specific language impairment.

Specific language impairment (SLI) is diagnosed when language is significantly below chronological age expectations in the absence of other developmental disorders, sensory impairments or global developmental delays. It has been suggested that gesture may enhance communication in children with SLI by providing an alternative means to convey words or extend utterances. However, gesture is a complex task that requires the integration of social, cognitive and motor skills, skills that some children with SLI may find challenging. In addition, there is reason to believe that language and gesture form an integrated system leading to the prediction that children with a SLI may also have difficulties with gestural communication. To explore the link between language and gesture in children with poor language skills. Fifteen children with SLI and 14 age-matched typically developing children (TD) participated in this study. The children completed measures of expressive and receptive vocabulary, non-verbal cognition, motor control, gesture comprehension and gesture production. TD children achieved significantly higher scores on measures of gesture production and gesture comprehension relative to children with SLI. Significant correlations between both measures of vocabulary and both measures of gesture suggest a tight link between language and gesture. The findings support the idea that gesture and language form one integrated communication system, rather than two separate communication modalities. This implies that children with SLI may have underlying deficits that impact not only on language but also on gesture production and comprehension.

Gestures make memories, but what kind? Patients with impaired procedural memory display disruptions in gesture production and comprehension.

Hand gesture, a ubiquitous feature of human interaction, facilitates communication. Gesture also facilitates new learning, benefiting speakers and listeners alike. Thus, gestures must impact cognition beyond simply supporting the expression of already-formed ideas. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting the effects of gesture on learning and memory are largely unknown. We hypothesized that gesture's ability to drive new learning is supported by procedural memory and that procedural memory deficits will disrupt gesture production and comprehension. We tested this proposal in patients with intact declarative memory, but impaired procedural memory as a consequence of Parkinson's disease (PD), and healthy comparison participants with intact declarative and procedural memory. In separate experiments, we manipulated the gestures participants saw and produced in a Tower of Hanoi (TOH) paradigm. In the first experiment, participants solved the task either on a physical board, requiring high arching movements to manipulate the discs from peg to peg, or on a computer, requiring only flat, sideways movements of the mouse. When explaining the task, healthy participants with intact procedural memory displayed evidence of their previous experience in their gestures, producing higher, more arching hand gestures after solving on a physical board, and smaller, flatter gestures after solving on a computer. In the second experiment, healthy participants who saw high arching hand gestures in an explanation prior to solving the task subsequently moved the mouse with significantly higher curvature than those who saw smaller, flatter gestures prior to solving the task. These patterns were absent in both gesture production and comprehension experiments in patients with procedural memory impairment. These findings suggest that the procedural memory system supports the ability of gesture to drive new learning.

From gesture to sign language: conventionalization of classifier constructions by adult hearing learners of British Sign Language.

There has long been interest in why languages are shaped the way they are, and in the relationship between sign language and gesture. In sign languages, entity classifiers are handshapes that encode how objects move, how they are located relative to one another, and how multiple objects of the same type are distributed in space. Previous studies have shown that hearing adults who are asked to use only manual gestures to describe how objects move in space will use gestures that bear some similarities to classifiers. We investigated how accurately hearing adults, who had been learning British Sign Language (BSL) for 1-3years, produce and comprehend classifiers in (static) locative and distributive constructions. In a production task, learners of BSL knew that they could use their hands to represent objects, but they had difficulty choosing the same, conventionalized, handshapes as native signers. They were, however, highly accurate at encoding location and orientation information. Learners therefore show the same pattern found in sign-naïve gesturers. In contrast, handshape, orientation, and location were comprehended with equal (high) accuracy, and testing a group of sign-naïve adults showed that they too were able to understand classifiers with higher than chance accuracy. We conclude that adult learners of BSL bring their visuo-spatial knowledge and gestural abilities to the tasks of understanding and producing constructions that contain entity classifiers. We speculate that investigating the time course of adult sign language acquisition might shed light on how gesture became (and, indeed, becomes) conventionalized during the genesis of sign languages.

Widening the lens: what the manual modality reveals about language, learning and cognition.

The goal of this paper is to widen the lens on language to include the manual modality. We look first at hearing children who are acquiring language from a spoken language model and find that even before they use speech to communicate, they use gesture. Moreover, those gestures precede, and predict, the acquisition of structures in speech. We look next at deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from using the oral modality, and whose hearing parents have not presented them with a language model in the manual modality. These children fall back on the manual modality to communicate and use gestures, which take on many of the forms and functions of natural language. These homemade gesture systems constitute the first step in the emergence of manual sign systems that are shared within deaf communities and are full-fledged languages. We end by widening the lens on sign language to include gesture and find that signers not only gesture, but they also use gesture in learning contexts just as speakers do. These findings suggest that what is key in gesture's ability to predict learning is its ability to add a second representational format to communication, rather than a second modality. Gesture can thus be language, assuming linguistic forms and functions, when other vehicles are not available; but when speech or sign is possible, gesture works along with language, providing an additional representational format that can promote learning.

Concealing of facial expressions by a wild Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus).

Behavioural research on non-vocal communication among non-human primates and its possible links to the origin of human language is a long-standing research topic. Because human language is under voluntary control, it is of interest whether this is also true for any communicative signals of other species. It has been argued that the behaviour of hiding a facial expression with one's hand supports the idea that gestures might be under more voluntary control than facial expressions among non-human primates, and it has also been interpreted as a sign of intentionality. So far, the behaviour has only been reported twice, for single gorilla and chimpanzee individuals, both in captivity. Here, we report the first observation of concealing of facial expressions by a monkey, a Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus), living in the wild. On eight separate occasions between 2009 and 2011 an adult male was filmed concealing two different facial expressions associated with play and aggression ("play face" and "scream face"), 22 times in total. The videos were analysed in detail, including gaze direction, hand usage, duration, and individuals present. This male was the only individual in his group to manifest this behaviour, which always occurred in the presence of a dominant male. Several possible interpretations of the function of the behaviour are discussed. The observations in this study indicate that the gestural communication and cognitive abilities of monkeys warrant more research attention.

Does Verbal and Gestural Expression Ability Predict Comprehension Ability in Cerebral Palsy?

Some people with cerebral palsy have motor and associated impairments that may hinder verbal and gestural expression to various extents. This study explores whether the ability to produce verbal or gestural expressions may be related to the comprehension of verbal communications and gestures. The influence of severity of motor impairment, general cognitive performance, and age on comprehension ability was also explored. Forty people with cerebral palsy were assigned to different groups according to their verbal and gestural expression abilities. A neuropsychological assessment of comprehension abilities and general cognitive performance was carried out. Multiple linear regression analysis was applied to identify the possible influence of expression abilities on comprehension abilities and also to detect the possible contribution of severity of motor impairment, general cognitive performance, and age. Results indicate that verbal and gestural comprehension was mainly predicted by general cognitive performance. Severity of motor impairment and age did not contribute to predicting comprehension abilities. Only verbal grammar comprehension was significantly predicted by verbal expression ability. Verbal expression ability may be an important marker for cerebral palsy therapies. In non-ambulant patients with bilateral cerebral palsy, impaired gestural expression should not be taken as an indicator of impaired gestural comprehension.

Gesturing Saves Cognitive Resources When Talking About Nonpresent Objects

In numerous experimental contexts, gesturing has been shown to lighten a speaker's cognitive load. However, in all of these experimental paradigms, the gestures have been directed to items in the "here-and-now." This study attempts to generalize gesture's ability to lighten cognitive load. We demonstrate here that gesturing continues to confer cognitive benefits when speakers talk about objects that are not present, and therefore cannot be directly indexed by gesture. These findings suggest that gesturing confers its benefits by more than simply tying abstract speech to the objects directly visible in the environment. Moreover, we show that the cognitive benefit conferred by gesturing is greater when novice learners produce gestures that add to the information expressed in speech than when they produce gestures that convey the same information as speech, suggesting that it is gesture's meaningfulness that gives it the ability to affect working memory load.