Let me show you what I know: Image, word and gesture in two-year-old children

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Brown, Sarah L.

• The iconic gesture used by two-year-old children is indicative of their knowledge and communicative abilities about objects and events. In this study, this knowledge was tested by studying the gesture produced by children with multiple language exposure and children with exposure to only one language, with the hypothesis that there would be a difference between the two groups. The Picture Naming Game (PiNG task) was used to elicit verbal responses as well as spontaneous iconic gesture from two-year-old children. There were no significant differences between the two groups of children; however, children used gesture to communicate information about how an object is to be used or how an event takes place, rather than simpler size/shape information. These results suggest that children are capable of creating complex and holistic communicative events.

• Date created

  2015-04-21

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Language exposure
  • Gesture
  • Children
  • Psychology
  • Representational strategy
  • Child bilingual
  • Communications

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3F43D

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International