Studying Gestures PSYC 453 Meeting 5 Photo: Koç University Longitudinal Language Development Database (KULLDD) Studying Gestures PSYC 453 Meeting 5

Why should we pay attention to hands? Spontaneous gestures Such a potent ingredient of children’s early communication Gesture provides a window to meanings and concepts that children are not able to produce yet in speech To understand children’s communicative intentions Show Mert referential communication

Gesture types Let’s generate examples Deictic gestures Mert video Ekin video (Worksheet II) Representational (iconic and metaphoric) Conventional Beats Q: Can infants talk about absent objects with deictic gestures? (Lizkowski)

Development Development of children’s gesture and its relation to language and cognitive development Type of Gesture Children early on produce mainly deictic gestures and very few iconics (Acredelo & Goodwyn, 1985; Bates, 1976). At 26 months, English-speaking children both start to comprehend and use iconic gestures (Namy, 2008; Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, in press). Italian children produce more iconic gestures than their American peers (Iverson et al., 2008).

Speech-gesture relationship: code communicative acts Gesture only Speech only (your analysis of the Elif video) Speech-Gesture combinations Children use gestures to supplement their speech when they are at the one-word stage to produce adjective-plus-noun constructions or noun-plus-noun constructions or verb-plus-noun constructions (nice + point at flower; dad + point at his tie; want + point at cookie). Supplementary gestures decrease with age (after 26 mos.) (Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2005; 2009).

Different types of speech-gesture combinations Match (redundant) Disambiguate Deictics, for example, need to be disambiguated Supplement

Different developmental periods Prelinguistic: give gestures, point gestures Number of points & vocabulary as measured in PPVT One-word period Reinforcers: no + shake finger Disambiguators: this+ point (man eating a carrot, phone) Supplementers: candy+ give Predicts when the child will produce 2-word utterances Later language development

Later language development, Elif Speech-Gesture Relationship: Supplement Speech: Koymuş. “(he) put (it).’” Gesture: Outside/Trees/Tortoise: Supplement She’s reciting an event where the kid and her caretaker chanced upon a tortoise on the sidewalk and the guard put it by the trees. That’s why she points out the window to the trees. Age: 21 mos.

Later language development He broke the window (with what?) Stick gesture Throw-ball gesture Q: What kind of gestures are these?

Later language development, narrative (So, et al., 2010)

Worksheets/in-class-activities and lab reports All received feedback on Worksheet 1 Worksheet 2 is due on Wednesday, 13th, 11 am 1 hour Assignment Lab report is due on October 18th; will be assigned on Wednesday Syllabus