Chapter 14. Learning to use gesture in narratives

Developmental trends in formal and semantic gesture competence

Olga Capirci | ISTC- CNR, Rome- Italy

Carla Cristilli | Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”

V. De Angelis | ISTC- CNR, Rome- Italy

Maria Graziano | SESA-Università degli Studi c“Suor Orsola Benincasa”

This study analyses the way in which children develop their competence in the formal and semantic aspects of gesture. The analysis is focused upon the use of representational gestures in a narrative context. A group of 30 Italian children from 4 to 10 years was videotaped while telling a video cartoon to an adult. Gestures were coded according to the parameters used in Sign Languages analysis and analysed in terms of the acquisition of their properties, the accuracy of their execution and correctness in content representation.It was investigated also the development of the symbolic competence in relation both to the use of some of these parameters and to the representational strategies adopted.Results indicate a developmental trend in all the phenomena investigated and point out some formal similarities between gesture and Sign Languages.

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Published online: 30 June 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/gs.4.16cap

Cited by

Cited by 9 other publications

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2022. In Italian Sign Language from a Cognitive and Socio-semiotic Perspective [Gesture Studies, 9],

Bello, Arianna, Silvia Stefanini, Pasquale Rinaldi, Daniela Onofrio & Virginia Volterra

2020. Gestural symbolic strategies in children with Down syndrome. Gesture 19:2-3 ► pp. 299 ff.

Colletta, Jean-Marc, Ramona Kunene Nicolas & Michèle Guidetti

2018. In Sources of Variation in First Language Acquisition [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 22], ► pp. 139 ff.

Cristilli, Carla

2014. In From Gesture in Conversation to Visible Action as Utterance, ► pp. 331 ff.

Marentette, Paula, Reyhan Furman, Marcus E. Suvanto & Elena Nicoladis

2020. Pantomime (Not Silent Gesture) in Multimodal Communication: Evidence From Children’s Narratives. Frontiers in Psychology 11

Volterra, Virginia, Olga Capirci, Maria Cristina Caselli, Pasquale Rinaldi & Laura Sparaci

2017. Developmental evidence for continuity from action to gesture to sign/word. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 8:1 ► pp. 13 ff.

Volterra, Virginia, Olga Capirci, Pasquale Rinaldi & Laura Sparaci

2018. From action to spoken and signed language through gesture. Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 19:1-2 ► pp. 216 ff.

Volterra, Virginia, Olga Capirci, Pasquale Rinaldi & Laura Sparaci

2020. In How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map [Benjamins Current Topics, 112], ► pp. 216 ff.

Weidinger, Nicole, Katrin Lindner, Katharina Hogrefe, Wolfram Ziegler & Georg Goldenberg

2017. Getting a Grasp on Children’s Representational Capacities in Pantomime of Object Use. Journal of Cognition and Development 18:2 ► pp. 246 ff.

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