The parallel development of the form and meaning of two-handed gestures and linguistic information packaging within a clause in narrative

• Authors: Kazuki Sekine , Sotaro Kita
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

We examined how two-handed gestures and speech with equivalent contents that are used in narrative develop during childhood. The participants were 40 native speakers of English consisting of four different age groups: 3-, 5-, 9-year-olds, and adults. A set of 10 video clips depicting motion events were used to elicit speech and gesture. There are two findings. First, two types of two-handed gestures showed different developmental changes: those with a single-handed stroke with a simultaneous hold increased with age, while those with a two handed-stroke decreased with age. Second, representational gesture and speech developed in parallel at the discourse level. More specifically, the ways in which information is packaged in a gesture and in a clause are similar for a given age group; that is, gesture and speech develop hand-in-hand.

Keywords

EN

speech; two-handed gestures; hold phase; children

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Open Linguistics
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 1

Dates

received

2015-01-16

accepted

2015-06-12

online

2015-07-17

Contributors

author

Kazuki Sekine

• University of Warwick, Department of Psychology, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom

author

Sotaro Kita

• University of Warwick, Department of Psychology, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/opli-2015-0015