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Part of
Language in Interaction: Studies in honor of Eve V. Clark
Edited by Inbal Arnon, Marisa Casillas, Chigusa Kurumada and Bruno Estigarribia
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 12] 2014
► pp. 139–156

Shared attention, gaze and pointing gestures in hearing and deaf children

| Sorbonne Nouvelle University

This chapter illustrates the richness of pointing and gaze as integral elements of spontaneous oral interactions both in signing and speaking mother-child dyads. These attention-sharing behaviors help infants interpret their caregivers’ productions. The children will then use them as first communication tools. But they have a particular function for signing children since they are fully integrated into the formal linguistic system of sign language. A comparison between the use of pointing and gaze in the longitudinal data of one deaf signing and one deaf speaking little girl from eight months to two, shows that the deaf child uses gaze and pointing more frequently and with more diversified functions than the hearing child who combines visual and auditory means.

Published online: 17 July 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.12.12mor
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de León, Lourdes
2023. Socialization of Attention. In A New Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 410 ff. DOI logo
Morgenstern, Aliyah, Stéphanie Caët & Fanny Limousin
2017. Pointage et auto-désignation chez l’enfant en français et en langue des signes française. Langue française N° 193:1 ► pp. 109 ff. DOI logo

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