Gesture production and comprehension in children with specific language impairment

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulties with spoken language. However, some recent research suggests that these impairments reflect underlying cognitive limitations. Studying gesture may inform us clinically and theoretically about the nature of the association between language and cognition. A total of 20 children with SLI and 19 typically developing (TD) peers were assessed on a novel measure of gesture production. Children were also assessed for sentence comprehension errors in a speech-gesture integration task. Children with SLI performed equally to peers on gesture production but performed less well when comprehending integrated speech and gesture. Error patterns revealed a significant group interaction: children with SLI made more gesture-based errors, whilst TD children made semantically based ones. Children with SLI accessed and produced lexically encoded gestures despite having impaired spoken vocabulary and this group also showed stronger associations between gesture and language than TD children. When SLI comprehension breaks down, gesture may be relied on over speech, whilst TD children have a preference for spoken cues. The findings suggest that for children with SLI, gesture scaffolds are still more related to language development than for TD peers who have out-grown earlier reliance on gestures. Future clinical implications may include standardized assessment of symbolic gesture and classroom based gesture support for clinical groups

On the Development of Early Algebraic Thinking

This article deals with the question of the development of algebraic thinking in young students. In contrast to mental approaches to cognition, we argue that thinking is made up of material and ideational components such as (inner and outer) speech, forms of sensuous imagination, gestures, tactility, and actual actions with signs and cultural artifacts. Drawing on data from a longitudinal classroom-based research program where 8-year old students were followed as they moved from Grade 2 to Grade 3 to Grade 4, our developmental research question is investigated in terms of the manner in which new relationships between embodiment, perception, and symbol-use emerge and evolve as students engage in patterning activities

How hand movements and speech tip the balance in cognitive development:A story about children, complexity, coordination, and affordances

When someone asks us to explain something, such as how a lever or balance scale works, we spontaneously move our hands and gesture. This is also true for children. Furthermore, children use their hands to discover things and to find out how something works. Previous research has shown that children’s hand movements hereby are ahead of speech, and play a leading role in cognitive development. Explanations for this assumed that cognitive understanding takes place in one’s head, and that hand movements and speech (only) reflect this. However, cognitive understanding arises and consists of the constant interplay between (hand) movements and speech, and someone’s physical and social environment. The physical environment includes task properties, for example, and the social environment includes other people. Therefore, I focused on this constant interplay between hand movements, speech, and the environment, to better understand hand movements’ role in cognitive development. Using science and technology tasks, we found that children’s speech affects hand movements more than the other way around. During difficult tasks the coupling between hand movements and speech becomes even stronger than in easy tasks. Interim changes in task properties differently affect hand movements and speech. Collaborating children coordinate their hand movements and speech, and even their head movements together. The coupling between hand movements and speech is related to age and (school) performance. It is important that teachers attend to children’s hand movements and speech, and arrange their lessons and classrooms such that there is room for both

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo

How Do Gestures Influence Thinking and Speaking? The Gesture-for-Conceptualization Hypothesis.

Peer reviewedPostprin

Gesture and Speech in Interaction - 4th edition (GESPIN 4)

International audienceThe fourth edition of Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN) was held in Nantes, France. With more than 40 papers, these proceedings show just what a flourishing field of enquiry gesture studies continues to be. The keynote speeches of the conference addressed three different aspects of multimodal interaction:gesture and grammar, gesture acquisition, and gesture and social interaction. In a talk entitled Qualitiesof event construal in speech and gesture: Aspect and tense, Alan Cienki presented an ongoing researchproject on narratives in French, German and Russian, a project that focuses especially on the verbal andgestural expression of grammatical tense and aspect in narratives in the three languages. Jean-MarcColletta's talk, entitled Gesture and Language Development: towards a unified theoretical framework,described the joint acquisition and development of speech and early conventional and representationalgestures. In Grammar, deixis, and multimodality between code-manifestation and code-integration or whyKendon's Continuum should be transformed into a gestural circle, Ellen Fricke proposed a revisitedgrammar of noun phrases that integrates gestures as part of the semiotic and typological codes of individuallanguages. From a pragmatic and cognitive perspective, Judith Holler explored the use ofgaze and hand gestures as means of organizing turns at talk as well as establishing common ground in apresentation entitled On the pragmatics of multi-modal face-to-face communication: Gesture, speech andgaze in the coordination of mental states and social interaction.Among the talks and posters presented at the conference, the vast majority of topics related, quitenaturally, to gesture and speech in interaction - understood both in terms of mapping of units in differentsemiotic modes and of the use of gesture and speech in social interaction. Several presentations explored the effects of impairments(such as diseases or the natural ageing process) on gesture and speech. The communicative relevance ofgesture and speech and audience-design in natural interactions, as well as in more controlled settings liketelevision debates and reports, was another topic addressed during the conference. Some participantsalso presented research on first and second language learning, while others discussed the relationshipbetween gesture and intonation. While most participants presented research on gesture and speech froman observer's perspective, be it in semiotics or pragmatics, some nevertheless focused on another importantaspect: the cognitive processes involved in language production and perception. Last but not least,participants also presented talks and posters on the computational analysis of gestures, whether involvingexternal devices (e.g. mocap, kinect) or concerning the use of specially-designed computer software forthe post-treatment of gestural data. Importantly, new links were made between semiotics and mocap data

Gestural-vocal coordination: longitudinal changes and predictive value on early lexical development

The aim of this study was to examine longitudinally gestural and vocal coordination in multimodal communicative patterns during the period of transition to first words, and its role in early lexical development. Eleven monolingual Spanish children were observed from 9 to 12 and 15 months of age in a semistructured play situation. We obtained three main findings: (1) the use of multimodal patterns of communication increases significantly with age during the period studied; (2) the rate of use of those multimodal patterns at 12 months predicts lexical development at 15 months; and (3) the use of the pointing gesture at 12 months, especially when it is accompanied with vocalization and social use of gaze, is the best predictor of lexical outcome at 15 months. Our findings support the idea that gestures, gazes and vocalizations are part of an integrated and developing system that children use flexibly to communicate from early on. The coordination of these three types of elements, especially when a pointing gesture is involved, has a predictive value on early lexical development and appears as a key for progress in language developmen

Theories of the development of human communication

This article considers evidence for innate motives for sharing rituals and symbols from animal semiotics, developmental neurobiology, physiology of prospective motor control, affective neuroscience and infant communication. Mastery of speech and language depends on polyrhythmic movements in narrative activities of many forms. Infants display intentional activity with feeling and sensitivity for the contingent reactions of other persons. Talk shares many of its generative powers with music and the other ‘imitative arts’. Its special adaptations concern the capacity to produce and learn an endless range of sounds to label discrete learned understandings, topics and projects of intended movement