Can gesture input support toddlers’ fast mapping?

Abstract

Forty-eight toddlers participated in a word-learning task to assess gesture input on mapping nonce words to unfamiliar objects. Receptive fast mapping and expressive naming for target object-word pairs were tested in three conditions – with a point, with a shape gesture, and in a no-gesture, word-only condition. No statistically significant effect of gesture for receptive fast-mapping was found but age was a factor. Two year olds outperformed one year olds for both measures. Only one girl in the one-year-old group correctly named any items. There was a significant interaction between gesture and gender for expressive naming. Two-year-old girls were six times more likely than two-year-old boys to correctly name items given point and shape gestures; whereas, boys named more items taught with the word only than with a point or shape gesture. The role of gesture input remains unclear, particularly for children under two years and for toddler boys.

Development of sensitivity to beat gesture and contrastive accenting in support of word learning in early childhood in boys and girls

“…An additional limitation of the study was data collection using only a referent identification task. Although pilot testing indicated that children struggled to produce novel words on demand, consistent with Foran et al (2023), inclusion of a novel word production task in addition to a referent identification task would yield additional data providing insights into the effects of beat gesture and contrastive accenting on novel word learning in early childhood. Finally, the word learning task used in the current study had limited discursive context, and novel word knowledge was only tested immediately following learning.…”

“…The findings of the current study add to the literature on the comprehension of emphasis cues in early childhood by demonstrating that interpretation of beat gesture in a contrastive word learning task varies with age by sex. Previous work suggests that girls’ language development in early childhood outpaces that of boys in several respects (Lange et al, 2016), and that infant and toddler girls produce more types of referential gestures and gesture-word combinations than boys (Eriksson et al, 2012; Germain et al, 2022; Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2010) and are more likely to name objects learned with referential gestures than boys (Foran et al, 2022). With respect to non-referential beat gesture development, the results of previous studies fail to provide evidence of sex differences (Austin & Sweller, 2014; Colletta et al, 2010; Igualada et al, 2017; Mathew et al, 2018).…”

“…This is somewhat surprising in light of evidence that girls’ early language development outpaces boys’ in several respects, including vocabulary and syntactic complexity (Bouchard et al, 2009; Fenson et al, 1994), and that this discrepancy persists into early childhood, with 3–6-year-old girls showing overall superiority and boys showing greater variability in vocabulary, grammar, speech comprehension, pronunciation, and processing of sentences and nonce words (Lange et al, 2016). Sex differences favoring girls have also been found in communicative gesture production (Eriksson et al, 2012), production of gesture-speech combinations (Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2010), and referential gesture comprehension in the context of word learning (Foran et al, 2022). At present, it is currently unclear whether sex differences are present in beat gesture development.…”

“…Although young children can successfully comprehend beat gestures between 3 and 5 years of age (Austin & Sweller, 2014; Igualada et al, 2017; Llanes-Coromina et al, 2018; Macoun & Sweller, 2016; Vilà-Giménez et al, 2019) and pitch accenting around 5 years of age (Ito et al, 2012, 2014; Lee & Snedeker, 2016; Sekerina & Trueswell, 2012; Wells et al, 2004), it is unclear whether and how their interpretation of these cues develops between the ages of 3 and 5 years. In addition to investigating the effects of beat gesture, contrastive accenting, and age, sex was included as an additional factor given that the language development of girls generally outpaces that of boys (Gleason & Ely, 2002) and that toddler girls are more likely to name labels of objects learned with iconic gestures than boys (Foran et al, 2022).…”

“…However, since previous research suggests that children comprehend beat gesture earlier than pitch accent (Austin & Sweller, 2014; Igualada et al, 2017; Ito et al, 2012, 2014; Lee & Snedeker, 2016; Llanes-Coromina et al, 2018; Macoun & Sweller, 2016; Sekerina & Trueswell, 2012; Vilà-Giménez et al, 2019; Wells et al, 2004), a stronger effect of beat gesture than contrastive accenting was expected in 3- and 4-year-olds. Finally, we predicted that beat gesture would facilitate contrastive word learning in girls to a greater extent than it would in boys, given evidence that girls’ use of referential gesture develops earlier than boys’ (Eriksson et al, 2012; Foran et al, 2022; Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2010).…”