Young Word Learners’ Interpretations of Words and Symbolic Gestures Within the Context of Ambiguous Reference

Early in development, many word‐learning phenomena generalize to symbolic gestures. The current study explored whether children avoid lexical overlap in the gestural modality, as they do in the verbal modality, within the context of ambiguous reference. Eighteen‐month‐olds’ interpretations of words and symbolic gestures in a symbol‐disambiguation task (Experiment 1) and a symbol‐learning task (Experiment 2) were investigated. In Experiment 1 (N = 32), children avoided verbal lexical overlap, mapping novel words to unnamed objects; children failed to display this pattern with symbolic gestures. In Experiment 2 (N = 32), 18‐month‐olds mapped both novel words and novel symbolic gestures onto their referents. Implications of these findings for the specialized nature of word learning and the development of lexical overlap avoidance are discussed.     

The role of social-referential context in verbal and nonverbal symbol learning

This study examined the role of social-referential context in 13- and 18-month-olds' mapping of verbal and nonverbal symbols to object categories. Infants heard either novel words or novel nonverbal sounds in either a referential or nonreferential context. In all conditions, an experimenter engaged in a social-referential interaction and the label was produced while the infant's attention was directed to the referent. In the referential condition, labels were produced by the experimenter within the context of a familiar naming routine. In the nonreferential condition, labels were emitted from a baby monitor placed near the infant. The study subsequently tested infants' mapping of the symbols to the referent objects using a forced-choice procedure. Although the results for the 18-month-olds were strongest, infants at both ages showed evidence of learning both words and sounds in the referential condition and failed to learn them in the nonreferential condition. Thus, infants successfully learned both words and sounds under the same circumstances at both ages. These findings suggest that the social-referential context, and not the symbolic form per se, determine infants' success at symbol learning.     

Executive function and early reading skills

The purpose of this study was to examine how executive function skills in verbal and nonverbal auditory tasks are related to early reading skills in beginning readers. Kindergarteners (N = 41, aged 5 years) completed verbal (phonemes) and nonverbal (environmental sounds) Continuous Performance tasks yielding measures of executive function (misses, false alarms, and shift) as well as reaction time and D-Prime (sensitivity). Year-end measures of early reading skill included tests of phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, as well as reading (words and nonwords). The children made more errors on the verbal than the nonverbal tasks, suggesting that executive function abilities may differ by task. Adding to the literature on the role of inhibitory skills in reading, verbal inhibitory executive function skills were tied more closely to early reading than other verbal or nonverbal skills when age, short-term memory, and vocabulary were controlled.     

Long‐Term Effects of Gestures on Memory for Foreign Language Words Trained in the Classroom

Language and gesture are viewed as highly interdependent systems. Besides supporting communication, gestures also have an impact on memory for verbal information compared to pure verbal encoding in native but also in foreign language learning. This article presents a within‐subject longitudinal study lasting 14 months that tested the use of gestures in the classroom, with the experimenter presenting the items to be acquired. Participants learned 36 words distributed across two training conditions: In the audio‐visual condition subjects read, heard, and spoke the words; in the gestural condition subjects additionally accompanied the words with symbolic gestures. Memory performance was assessed through cued native‐to‐foreign translation tests at five time points. The results show that gestures significantly enhance vocabulary learning in quantity and over time. The findings are discussed in terms of Klimesch's connectivity model (CM) of information processing. Thereafter, a code, a word, is better integrated into long‐term memory if it is deep, that is, if it is comprised of many interconnected components.     

Symbolic Gesture versus Word: Is There a Modality Advantage for Onset of Symbol Use?

Researchers have hypothesized in the past that children learning sign languages develop signs at an earlier age than is typically expected for vocal words. This assumption, however, has recently been questioned on the grounds that researchers have not always guaranteed that words and gestures are being used in a comparable fashion. The present study was designed to shed light on this controversy by comparing the onset of symbolic use of signs and words in a group of 22 hearing children exposed to symbolic gestures from 11 months onward. Bimonthly interviews emphasizing contexts of use of gestures and vocal words indicated a smaller modality difference than early research had predicted, thus providing support for the hypothesis that strides in cognitive abilities such as memory, categorization, and symbolization underlie this milestone in both modalities. At the same time, however, the data also indicated that the small difference in onset time was reliable, thus providing support for the notion that the gestural modality is, in fact, easier for many infants to master once the requisite cognitive skills are in place.     

Representational Abilities and the Hearing Status of Child/Mother Dyads

Two representational abilities, expressive and receptive language and symbolic play, were assessed in multiple formats in hearing and deaf 2-year-old children of hearing and deaf mothers. Based on maternal report, hearing children of hearing and deaf mothers produced more words than deaf children of hearing mothers, hearing children of hearing mothers more words than deaf children of deaf mothers, and deaf children of deaf mothers more words than deaf children of hearing mothers. Based on experimenter assessments, hearing children in both groups produced and comprehended more words than deaf children in both groups. By contrast, no differences emerged among these groups in child solitary symbolic play or in child-initiated or mother-initiated child collaborative symbolic play; all groups also increased equivalently in symbolic play between solitary and collaborative play. Representational language and symbolic play were unrelated in hearing children of hearing mothers and in deaf children of deaf mothers, but the 2 abilities were associated in children in the 2 child/mother mismatched hearing status groups. These findings are placed in the context of a proposed developing modularity of verbal and nonverbal symbol systems, and the implications of hearing status in communicative exchanges between children and their mothers in diverse hearing and deaf dyads are explored.     

Communicating to Learn: Infants’ Pointing Gestures Result in Optimal Learning

Infants’ pointing gestures are a critical predictor of early vocabulary size. However, it remains unknown precisely how pointing relates to word learning. The current study addressed this question in a sample of 108 infants, testing one mechanism by which infants’ pointing may influence their learning. In Study 1, 18‐month‐olds, but not 12‐month‐olds, more readily mapped labels to objects if they had first pointed toward those objects than if they had referenced those objects via other communicative behaviors, such as reaching or gaze alternations. In Study 2, when an experimenter labeled a not pointed‐to‐object, 18‐month‐olds’ pointing was no longer related to enhanced fast mapping. These findings suggest that infants’ pointing gestures reflect a readiness and, potentially, a desire to learn.     

To Sign or Not to Sign? The Impact of Encouraging Infants to Gesture on Infant Language and Maternal Mind‐Mindedness

Findings are presented from the first randomized control trial of the effects of encouraging symbolic gesture (or “baby sign”) on infant language, following 40 infants from age 8 months to 20 months. Half of the mothers were trained to model a target set of gestures to their infants. Frequent measures were taken of infant language development and dyadic interactions were scrutinized to assess mind‐mindedness. Infants exposed to gesture did not differ from control conditions on language outcomes; thus, no support was found for previous claims that encouraging gesturing with infants accelerates linguistic development. Microgenetic analysis revealed mothers in the gesture training conditions were more responsive to their infants' nonverbal cues and encouraged more independent action by their infant.     

Self‐paced segmentation of written words on a touchscreen tablet promotes the oral production of nonverbal and minimally verbal children with autism

We investigated in a pilot study the effects of various types of visual mediation (photos, written words and self‐paced syllabic segmentation of written words displayed on a touchscreen tablet) that are thought to facilitate the oral production of nonverbal and minimally verbal children with autism, according to the participants’ level of oral language development and, more specifically, their ability to produce delayed echolalia. We also sought to identify the cognitive characteristics that need to be taken into account when seeking to develop the oral production of nonverbal children with autism. Results showed that the nonverbal and minimally verbal children with autism were able of using written words to produce them orally. Their performance was largely dependent on their level of language development. Tasks combining written and oral modalities prompted some of them to engage in oral production for the first time (isolated syllables for nonverbal children) and allowed others to produce non‐random strings of syllables (minimally verbal children).     

Communication competence in reading and learning disabilities

Conclusion The evidence indicates that learning-disabled children show pervasive and enduring language problems across a wide variety of language tasks. The studies suggest that the problems experienced by learning and reading-disabled children may fall into the categories of phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as well as nonverbal communication. In terms of nonverbal communication, these children are less accurate in interpreting nonverbal auditory and visual cues. In phonology, it appears that they are less skilled in detecting the segments of single words and thus have difficulty establishing phoneme to grapheme correspondence. In the area of syntax, learning-disabled males are less skilled in dealing with inflection and the comprehension and creation of complex sentences. In semantics, they are less adequate than nondisabled children in defining words, creating sentences, and classifying objects into categories. They show less adequate sentence production, are less skilled at recognizing their errors, and are significantly slower in generating verbal responses. Finally, there is one study that suggests that learning-disabled children may be discriminated by their use of language in social situations. This paper was presented at the 29th Annual Conference of The Orton Society at Minneapolis, November, 1978.     

Nonverbal learning disability,school behavior,and dyslexia

The aims of the study were to investigate whether children showing a low nonverbal/high verbal (LNV) WISC-R profile are more likely to exhibit behaviors conducive to school failure than children with a low verbal/high nonverbal (LV) profile, and to examine the relationships among these behaviors, the LNV/LV profiles, and reading ability. The 65 subjects included 27 LNV and 38 LV children, aged 5 to 11 years. Results confirmed earlier findings (Badian 1986) that LNV children are perceived by their teachers as significantly poorer than LV children in many behaviors associated with school success. There was a dichotomy, however, between LNV good and poor readers. All LNV subjects displayed problems in organizational skills, but those who were dyslexic were poorer in social behavior (e.g., acceptance of criticism and peer relationships) than either LNV good readers or LV good or poor readers. It was concluded that children with a low nonverbal/high verbal profile and a probable right hemisphere dysfunction, who appear to be dyslexic in the early school years, are at high risk for both social behavior problems and school failure, and that these children are a more high-risk group than poor readers with a low verbal/high nonverbal profile.     

Genetic and environmental covariation between verbal and nonverbal cognitive development in infancy

Despite cognitive neuroscience's emphasis on the modularity of cognitive processes, multivariate genetic research indicates that the same genetic factors largely affect diverse cognitive abilities, at least from middle childhood onward. We explored this issue for verbal and nonverbal cognitive development in infancy in a study of 1,937 pairs of same-sex 2-year-old twins born in England and Wales in 1994. The twins were assessed by having their parents use a measure of productive vocabulary (the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory) and a novel measure of nonverbal cognitive abilities (Parent Report of Children's Ability). Verbal and nonverbal development correlated .42. A multivariate genetic analysis indicated that genetic factors were responsible for less than half of this phenotypic correlation. Moreover, the genetic correlation between verbal and nonverbal abilities was only .30, which indicates that genetic effects on verbal and nonverbal abilities are largely independent in infancy. These multivariate genetic results suggest that genetic effects on cognitive abilities are modular early in development and then become increasingly molar. The implications of this result for theories of cognitive development are discussed.     

The role of pictures and gestures as nonverbal aids in preschoolers’ word learning in a novel language

Previous research suggests that presenting redundant nonverbal semantic information in the form of gestures and/or pictures may aid word learning in first and foreign languages. But do nonverbal supports help all learners equally? We address this issue by examining the role of gestures and pictures as nonverbal supports for word learning in a novel (e.g. original/pretend) language in a sample of 62 preschoolers who differ in language abilities, language background, and gender. We tested children’s ability to learn novel words for familiar objects using a within-subjects design with three conditions: word-only; word + gesture; word + picture. Children were assessed on English translation, immediate comprehension and follow-up comprehension 1 week later. Overall performance on the tasks differed by characteristics of the learners. The importance of considering the interplay between learner characteristics and instructional strategies is discussed.     

Scientific investigations,metaphorical gestures,and the emergence of abstract scientific concepts

Where anthropological and psychological studies have shown that gestures are a central feature of communication and cognition, little is known about the role of gesture in learning and instruction. Drawing from a large database on student learning, we show that when students engage in conversations in the presence of material objects, these objects provide a phenomenal ground against which students can enact metaphorical gestures that embody (give a body to) entities that are conceptual and abstract. In such instances, gestures are often subsequently replaced by an increasing reliance upon the verbal mode of communication. If gestures constitute a bridge between experiences in the physical world and abstract conceptual language, as we conjecture here, our study has significant implications for both learning and instruction.     

Preschool Children's Symbolic Representation of Objects through Gestures

To investigate the symbolic quality of preschoolers' gestural representations in the absence of real objects, 48 children (16 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) performed 2 tasks. In the first task, they were asked to pretend to use 8 common objects (e.g., "pretend to brush your teeth with a toothbrush"). There was an age-related progression in the symbolic quality of gestural representations. 3- and 4-year-olds used mostly body part gestures (e.g., using an extended finger as the toothbrush), whereas 5-year-olds used imaginary object gestures (e.g., pretending to hold an imaginary toothbrush). To determine if children's symbolic skill is sufficiently flexible to allow them to use gestures other than those spontaneously produced in the first task, in the second task children were asked to imitate, for each object, a gesture modeled by an experimenter. The modeled gesture was different from the one the child performed on the first task (e.g., if the child used a body part gesture to represent a particular object, the experimenter modeled an imaginary object gesture for that object). Ability to imitate modeled gestures was positively related to age but was also influenced by the symbolic mode of gesture. 3-year-olds could not imitate imaginary object gestures as well as body part gestures, suggesting that young preschoolers have difficulty performing symbolic acts that exceed their symbolic level even when the acts are modeled. Results from both tasks provide strong evidence for a developmental progression from concrete body part to more abstract imaginary object gestural representations during the preschool years.     

An observational study of social exclusion under varied conditions: gender and developmental differences

To investigate social exclusion, 146 dyads of close friends (N = 292, ages 10, 12, and 14) were observed as they played a board game with a same-gender confederate actor, trained to be a difficult play partner. Verbalizations and gestures were coded for verbal and nonverbal social exclusion, verbal aggression, and verbal assertion. The results indicated few developmental differences. For verbal responses in the presence of the actor, boys were more socially exclusive and verbally aggressive than were girls. Girls engaged in more nonverbal social exclusion in the presence of the actor than did boys. Girls' socially exclusive behaviors were unrelated to other negative behaviors and more strongly related between friends in the actor's absence.     

Emergence of graphic symbol functioning and the question of domain specificity: a longitudinal training study

The impact of social scaffolding on the emergence of graphic symbol functioning was explored in a longitudinal training study. Links among graphic, language, and play domains in symbolic development were also investigated. The symbolic functioning of 16 children, who were 28 months at the outset of the study, was assessed in comprehension and production tasks across the three domains at monthly intervals from 28 to 36 months, and again at 42 months. Training was delivered in between monthly assessments during weekly visits. Half of the children received training, which consisted of the experimenter drawing common objects and highlighting the relation between pictures and their referents, for 16 consecutive weeks early in the study (early training, ET). The remaining half received a placebo version of training for these 16 weeks, followed by actual training for 4 weeks in the fifth month (late training, LT). After the first 4 months of training the ET group was found to have accelerated comprehension and production of graphic symbols relative to the LT group. After the fifth month, the LT group reached the same level of graphic symbol performance as the ET group. There were strong positive correlations found among graphic symbol functioning and language and play, and between play and language. These findings support the view that graphic symbolic development can be influenced by cultural scaffolding, that more extensive training is needed early rather than later in development, and that interrelationships exist among symbolic domains.     

Pointing sets the stage for learning language--and creating language

Tomasello, Carpenter, and Liszkowski (2007) have argued that pointing gestures do much more than single out objects in the world. Pointing gestures function as part of a system of shared intentionality even at early stages of development. As such, pointing gestures form the platform on which linguistic communication rests, paving the way for later language learning. This commentary provides evidence that pointing gestures do establish a foundation for learning a language and, moreover, set the stage for creating a language.     

Theory of mind development in deaf children: a nonverbal test of false-belief understanding

Our aim in this study was to investigate whether previous findings pointing to a delay in deaf children's theory of mind development are replicated when linguistic demands placed on the deaf child are minimized in a nonverbal version of standard false-belief tasks. Twenty-four prelingually deaf, orally trained children born of hearing parents were tested with both a verbal and a nonverbal version of a false-belief task. Neither the younger (range: 4 years 7 months-6 years 5 months) nor the older (range: 6 years 9 months-11 years 11 months) children of the final sample of 21 children performed above chance in the verbal task. The nonverbal task significantly facilitated performance in children of all ages. Despite this facilitation, we observed a developmental delay: only the older group performed significantly above chance in the nonverbal false-belief task, even though the younger children were at the average age when hearing children normally pass standard false-belief tests. We discuss these findings in light of the hypothesis that language development and conversational competence are crucial to the acquisition of a theory of mind.     

Early action and gesture "vocabulary" and its relation with word comprehension and production

Data from 492 Italian infants (8-18 months) were collected with the parental questionnaire MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories to describe early actions and gestures (A-G) "vocabulary" and its relation with spoken vocabulary in both comprehension and production. A-G were more strongly correlated with word comprehension than word production. A clear developmental pattern for the different types of A-G was found. These findings are similar to those of different Western languages, indicating a common biological and cultural basis. The analysis of individual A-G and their relations with early words with a related meaning showed interesting similarities between the production of A-G with and without object manipulation and the comprehension and production of corresponding words. Results indicate that the transition from A-G to spoken language is mediated by word comprehension.