An integrative approach to understanding factors that influence monolingual and bilingual children's use of iconic co-speech gestures

The goal of the present thesis was to investigate the influence of four factors on 4- to 6-year-old monolingual and bilingual children's use of iconic gestures. The factors under study were co-speech gesture exposure, word type, verbal specificity and language proficiency. Iconic gestures depict aspects of concrete objects and events (e.g., shape, manner of motion).Manuscript 1 examined whether children produce specific gesture rates with different word types, and whether producing these word-specific gesture rates is influenced by the amount of exposure the children receive to other speakers producing these gesture rates. Iconic gesture rates with manner verbs (MV) and sound symbolic words (SSW) in manner of motion descriptions were examined because MVs are used frequently in the three languages under study (English, French and Japanese), whereas frequent use of SSWs is limited to Japanese. The results demonstrated that Japanese monolinguals gestured more frequently with SSWs than with MVs. However, three groups of bilinguals (French-dominant and Japanese-dominant French-Japanese bilinguals, English-dominant English-Japanese bilinguals) gestured at similar rates when using Japanese SSWs and MVs. In addition, the gesture rates with MVs were similar across French-, English- and Japanese-speaking monolinguals, and between the French-Japanese bilingual groups' MVs in French and Japanese. These results suggest that the bilinguals' exposure to similar gesture rates with MVs in each language was sufficient to learn this gesture rate. However, their reduced exposure to frequent gesture use with SSWs (used mainly in Japanese) affected their gesture rates with these words such that they did not gesture more with SSWs than with MVs as the Japanese monolinguals did. These findings suggest that children learn word-specific gesture rates through exposure to other speakers producing those word-specific gesture rates.Manuscript 2 examined whether the influence of language proficiency on gesture use depends on the specificity of verbal utterances. French and Japanese monolinguals and French-Japanese bilinguals were found to gesture more often when their verbal descriptions were non-specific and imprecise compared to when these were specific and precise, regardless of their level of language proficiency. A comparison of gesture use with specific French descriptions by French monolinguals and two groups of French-Japanese bilinguals who differed in their level of French proficiency revealed a quadratic trend: the low proficiency bilingual group and the high proficiency monolingual group gestured more than the intermediate proficiency bilingual group. The bilingual groups' gesture use with specific Japanese descriptions was compared to that of Japanese monolinguals. They had similar levels of Japanese proficiency and did not differ significantly in gesture use. Together, these findings demonstrate that verbal specificity is an important factor for understanding how language proficiency influences iconic gesture use.Based on the findings of Manuscripts 1 and 2 and previous relevant findings, a working model is proposed to explain how speakers' use of iconic gestures is influenced by several factors simultaneously. The model includes the four factors investigated here (co-speech gesture exposure, word type, verbal specificity and language proficiency), as well as the difficulty level of the task undertaken (context) and the speaker's cognitive capacity. The functions that iconic gestures may have for speakers and addressees as a result of the combined factors are also discussed.L'objectif de la présente thèse était d'étudier l'influence de quatre facteurs sur les gestes iconiques produits par des enfants monolingues et bilingues âgés entre 4 et 6 ans; l'exposition au gestes qui accompagne la parole, le type de mot, la spécificité des verbes, et la maîtrise de la langue. Les gestes iconiques illustrent un caractéristique particulier d'un objet concret ou d'un événement (e.x. forme d'un objet, manière de mouvement).Le premier manuscrit enquêtait si les enfants produisent des taux de geste spécifiques avec différents types de mots (verbes décrivant manière de mouvement, VM; mots symboliques décrivant des sons, MSS), et si ces taux sont influencés par les taux de geste produits par d'autres locuteurs dans l'entourage des enfants. Les VM sont utilisés fréquemment dans les trois langues à l'étude (anglais, français, japonais), tandis que les MSS sont utilisés fréquemment seulement en japonais. Les enfants monolingues japonais ont produit des gestes plus fréquemment avec des MSS qu'avec des VM. Par contre, trois différents groupes d'enfants bilingues (deux groupes français-japonais, un group anglais-japonais) ont produit des gestes aussi fréquemment avec des MSS qu'avec des VM en japonais. En outre, les taux de gestes accompagnant les VM étaient similaires entre les monolingues français, anglais et japonais. Les taux de gestes accompagnant les VM français et japonais étaient aussi similaires pour les bilingues. Ces résultats suggèrent que pour les enfants bilingues, l'exposition a des taux similaires de gestes accompagnant les VM dans leurs deux langues était suffisant pour apprendre ces taux de gestes. Cependant, l'exposition réduite des enfants bilingues aux gestes accompagnants les MSS a influencé leurs taux de gestes pour ces mots, telles que, contrairement a ce des monolingues japonais, ils n'étaient pas plus élever que les taux de gestes accompagnants les VM. Ces résultats suggèrent que les enfants apprennent les taux de gestes pour des mots spécifiques a travers l'exposition à ces mêmes taux de gestes par d'autres locuteurs.Le deuxième manuscrit a examiné si l'influence de la maîtrise de la langue sur l'utilisation des gestes dépend de la spécificité des expressions accompagnants ces gestes. Des enfants monolingues français et japonais, et bilingues français-japonais ont utilisés des gestes le plus souvent lorsque leurs descriptions étaient non spécifiques par rapport à quand elles étaient spécifiques, indépendamment de leur niveau de maîtrise de la langue. Une comparaison de l'utilisation de gestes avec des descriptions françaises spécifiques par trois groupes d'enfants avec des niveau de maitrise de la langue française différents a révélé une tendance quadratique : le groupe bilingue avec un niveau bas de compétence et le groupe monolingue avec un niveau haut de compétence ont produit plus de gestes que le groupe bilingue avec un niveau intermédiaire de compétence. L'utilisation de gestes avec des descriptions spécifiques japonais par les deux groupes d'enfants bilingues a été comparée à celle des enfants monolingues japonais. Les enfants bilingues avaient une maitrise de la langue japonaise et une utilisation de gestes similaire a celle des enfants monolingues japonais. Ensemble, ces résultats montrent que la spécificité des expressions est un facteur important pour comprendre comment la maîtrise de la langue peut influencer l'utilisation de gestes iconiques.A partir des conclusions de ces deux manuscrits, ainsi que les conclusions pertinentes antérieures, un modèle de travail est proposé pour expliquer la façon dont l'utilisation de gestes iconiques est influencés par plusieurs facteurs simultanément. Le modèle comprend les quatre facteurs étudiés ici, ainsi que le niveau de difficulté de la tâche entreprise, et de la capacité cognitive du locuteur. Les fonctions que les gestes iconiques peuvent avoir pour les locuteurs et les allocutaires en raison de ces facteurs sont également discutés

Subjective frequency ratings for 432 ASL signs

Given the importance of lexical frequency for psycholinguistic research and the lack of comprehensive frequency data for sign languages, we collected subjective estimates of lexical frequency for 432 signs in American Sign Language (ASL). Our participants were 59 deaf signers who first began to acquire ASL at ages ranging from birth to 14 years old and who had a minimum of 10 years of experience. Subjective frequency estimates were made on a scale ranging from 1 = rarely see the sign to 7 = always see the sign. The mean subjective frequency ratings for individual signs did not vary in relation to age of sign language exposure (AoLE), chronological age, or length of ASL experience. Nor did AoLE show significant effects on the response times (RTs) for making the ratings. However, RTs were highly correlated with mean frequency ratings. These results suggest that the distributions of subjective lexical frequencies are consistent across signers with varying AoLEs. The implications for research practice are that subjective frequency ratings from random samples of highly experienced deaf signers can provide a reasonable measure of lexical control in sign language experiments. The Appendix gives the mean and median subjective frequency ratings and the mean and median log(RT) of the ASL signs for the entire sample; the supplemental material gives these measures for the three AoLE groups: native, early, and late

Subjective frequency ratings for 432 ASL signs

Abstract Given the importance of lexical frequency for psycholinguistic research and the lack of comprehensive frequency data for sign languages, we collected subjective estimates of lexical frequency for 432 signs in American Sign Language (ASL). Our participants were 59 deaf signers who first began to acquire ASL at ages ranging from birth to 14 years old and who had a minimum of 10 years of experience. Subjective frequency estimates were made on a scale ranging from 1 = rarely see the sign to 7 = always see the sign. The mean subjective frequency ratings for individual signs did not vary in relation to age of sign language exposure (AoLE), chronological age, or length of ASL experience. Nor did AoLE show significant effects on the response times (RTs) for making the ratings. However, RTs were highly correlated with mean frequency ratings. These results suggest that the distributions of subjective lexical frequencies are consistent across signers with varying AoLEs. The implications for research practice are that subjective frequency ratings from random samples of highly experienced deaf signers can provide a reasonable measure of lexical control in sign language experiments. The Appendix gives the mean and median subjective frequency ratings and the mean and median log(RT) of the ASL signs for the entire sample; the supplemental material gives these measures for the three AoLE groups: native, early, and late

Subjective frequency ratings for 432 ASL signs

Given the importance of lexical frequency for psycholinguistic research, and the lack of comprehensive frequency data for sign languages, we collected subjective estimates of lexical frequency for 432 signs in American Sign Language. Participants were 59 deaf signers who first began to acquire ASL at ages ranging from birth to 14 years with a minimum of 10 years experience. Subjective frequency estimates were made on a scale ranging from 1 = rarely see the sign to 7 = always see the sign. Mean subjective frequency ratings for individual signs did not vary in relation to age of sign language exposure (AoLE), chronological age, or length of ASL experience. Nor did AoLE show significant effects on response time for making the ratings. However, RT was highly correlated with mean frequency rating. These results suggest that the distributions of subjective lexical frequencies are consistent across signers with varying AoLE. The implications for research practice are that subjective frequency ratings from random samples of highly experienced deaf signers can provide a reasonable measures of lexical control in sign language experiments. The appendix gives the mean and median subjective frequency rating, and the median and mean log(RT) for the ASL signs for the entire sample; the supplemental material gives these measures for three AoLE groups, Native, Early, and Late