TY - JOUR
T1 - Talking to the beat
T2 - six-year-olds' use of stroke-defined non-referential gestures
AU - Mathew, Mili
AU - Yuen, Ivan
AU - Demuth, Katherine
PY - 2018/4/1
Y1 - 2018/4/1
N2 - Children are known to use different types of referential gestures (e.g., deictic, iconic) from a very young age. In contrast, their use of non-referential gestures is not well established. This study investigated the use of stroke-defined non-referential ‘beat’ gestures in a story-retelling and an exposition task by twelve 6-year-olds, an age at which proficiency in discourse is beginning to develop. The goals of the study were to (1) establish if children this age use stroke-defined beats, (2) determine whether the two discourse types influence the incidence of stroke-defined beats, and (3) examine the extent to which stroke-defined beats co-occur with lexical words or pitch accents. The results showed that nine of the children produced at least one beat gesture with a well-defined stroke phase, and that the frequency of the stroke-defined beat gesture use did not differ significantly between the two tasks. Stroke-defined beats occurred more often on lexical words than function words, but they did not co-occur more often with a pitch accent, suggesting its potential link with pitch accents for emphasis. This study therefore provides support for children’s ‘prosodic’ use of gesture – a function which may become more common as discourse abilities develop.
AB - Children are known to use different types of referential gestures (e.g., deictic, iconic) from a very young age. In contrast, their use of non-referential gestures is not well established. This study investigated the use of stroke-defined non-referential ‘beat’ gestures in a story-retelling and an exposition task by twelve 6-year-olds, an age at which proficiency in discourse is beginning to develop. The goals of the study were to (1) establish if children this age use stroke-defined beats, (2) determine whether the two discourse types influence the incidence of stroke-defined beats, and (3) examine the extent to which stroke-defined beats co-occur with lexical words or pitch accents. The results showed that nine of the children produced at least one beat gesture with a well-defined stroke phase, and that the frequency of the stroke-defined beat gesture use did not differ significantly between the two tasks. Stroke-defined beats occurred more often on lexical words than function words, but they did not co-occur more often with a pitch accent, suggesting its potential link with pitch accents for emphasis. This study therefore provides support for children’s ‘prosodic’ use of gesture – a function which may become more common as discourse abilities develop.
KW - discourse
KW - emphasis
KW - gestural development
KW - gesture–speech relationship
KW - stroke-defined beats
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/CE110001021
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FL130100014
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85044096669&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0142723717734949
DO - 10.1177/0142723717734949
M3 - Article
VL - 38
SP - 111
EP - 128
JO - First Language
JF - First Language
SN - 0142-7237
IS - 2
ER -