This study investigated whether children alter their gestures when their listeners cannot see those gestures. Sixteen kindergarten children viewed four short cartoon episodes. After each episode, the child retold the story to an adult listener. For two episodes, the child and listener sat face-to-face, and for the other two episodes, an opaque curtain was placed between them. Children gestured at a significantly higher rate when they could see their listeners than when they could not. However, the amount, fluency, and content of children’s speech did not differ across conditions. Thus, kindergarten children alter their gestures to suit their listeners, and the observed changes in gesture do not appear to depend on changes in speech.
2005. Gesture in Spatial Cognition: Expressing, Communicating, and Thinking About Spatial Information. Spatial Cognition & Computation 5:4 ► pp. 307 ff.
Anastasiou, Dimitra & Christoph Stahl
2012. Gestures Used by Intelligent Wheelchair Users. In Computers Helping People with Special Needs [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7383], ► pp. 392 ff.
Belhiah, Hassan
2013. Using the Hand to Choreograph Instruction: On the Functional Role of Gesture in Definition Talk. The Modern Language Journal 97:2 ► pp. 417 ff.
Brown, Lucien, Hyunji Kim, Iris Hübscher & Bodo Winter
2015. Gestures Occur With Spatial and Motoric Knowledge: It's More Than Just Coincidence. Perspectives on Language Learning and Education 22:2 ► pp. 42 ff.
Hostetter, Autumn B. & Martha W. Alibali
2019. Gesture as simulated action: Revisiting the framework. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 26:3 ► pp. 721 ff.
Macoun, Alice & Naomi Sweller
2016. Listening and watching: The effects of observing gesture on preschoolers’ narrative comprehension. Cognitive Development 40 ► pp. 68 ff.
Mainela‐Arnold, Elina, Martha W. Alibali, Autumn B. Hostetter & Julia L. Evans
2014. Gesture–speech integration in children with specific language impairment. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 49:6 ► pp. 761 ff.
Morett, Laura M., Kirsten O’Hearn, Beatriz Luna & Avniel Singh Ghuman
2016. Altered Gesture and Speech Production in ASD Detract from In-Person Communicative Quality. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 46:3 ► pp. 998 ff.
Wu, Ying Choon & Seana Coulson
2014. Co-speech iconic gestures and visuo-spatial working memory. Acta Psychologica 153 ► pp. 39 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 february 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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