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

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 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).

5. 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).

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

7. 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

8. 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.

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

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

11. 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