Do you understand what I want to tell you? Early sensitivity in bilinguals' iconic gesture perception and production

Abstract

Previous research has shown differences in monolingual and bilingual communication. We explored whether monolingual and bilingual pre-schoolers (N = 80) differ in their ability to understand others' iconic gestures (gesture perception) and produce intelligible iconic gestures themselves (gesture production) and how these two abilities are related to differences in parental iconic gesture frequency. In a gesture perception task, the experimenter replaced the last word of every sentence with an iconic gesture. The child was then asked to choose one of four pictures that matched the gesture as well as the sentence. In a gesture production task, children were asked to indicate 'with their hands' to a deaf puppet which objects to select. Finally, parental gesture frequency was measured while parents answered three different questions. In the iconic gesture perception task, monolingual and bilingual children did not differ. In contrast, bilinguals produced more intelligible gestures than their monolingual peers. Finally, bilingual children's parents gestured more while they spoke than monolingual children's parents. We suggest that bilinguals' heightened sensitivity to their interaction partner supports their ability to produce intelligible gestures and results in a bilingual advantage in iconic gesture production.

Gesture Use and Processing: A Review on Individual Differences in Cognitive Resources

“…Developmental studies suggest that children might use gestures as an alternative channel of expression to compensate for their limited linguistic proficiency (e.g., younger vs. older children or children vs. adults; Church et al, 2000 ; Alibali et al, 2009 ; Colletta et al, 2010 ). This is in line with bilingualism research showing that bilingual children speaking in their L2 used more gestures than monolinguals (e.g., Smithson et al, 2011 ; Wermelinger et al, 2020 ). Moreover, research on clinical populations with communication and language delays suggests that although there are delays in gesture production in the first 2 years, gesture might be used to compensate for communication and language difficulties at preschool and school ages by some children ( Özçalışkan et al, 2013 ; LeBarton and Iverson, 2017 ).…”

“…Gesture is also an early diagnostic tool to foresee persistent language delay, especially for children with unilateral brain lesions ( Sauer et al, 2010 ; Özçalışkan et al, 2013 ). Although these studies suggest a link between early spoken language abilities and gesture production in children, the direct evidence on how individual differences in early receptive and expressive language skills relate with spontaneous gesture use within children with and without language delays is quite limited ( Kartalkanat and Göksun, 2020 ; Wermelinger et al, 2020 ).…”

Toddler-directed and adult-directed gesture frequency in monolingual and bilingual caregivers

“…Here, we test whether bilingual caregivers adjust their gestures depending on addressee (toddler-vs adult-directed) and cognitive-linguistic context (monolingual vs. bilingual/synonym condition). First, given reports in the literature that bilinguals tend to gesture more than monolinguals (Gullberg, 2013;Nicoladis et al, 2007;Wermelinger et al, 2020), we expect to see a higher gesture rate in bilingual caregivers compared to monolingual caregivers across all conditions. Second, if caregivers believe that a bilingual context (when both languages are used) is more difficult for a child than a monolingual context, they might compensate for this by using more gestures.…”

“…In addition, several studies reported that bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals, which has been associated with weaker language proficiency, or alternatively, might be due to more general increased cognitive load associated with bilingual language use (Alibali et al, 1997;Ping & Goldin-Meadow, 2010;Smithson & Nicoladis, 2013). Furthermore, in a gesture reproduction task that required participants describing different actions in the language of their choice to an adult, Swiss German bilinguals produced more iconic gestures than Swiss-German monolinguals (Wermelinger et al, 2020). To gain further insight into gesture production in bilinguals and its relation with communicative and cognitive-linguistic demands, the current study investigated gesture use in story-retelling by monolingual and bilingual caregivers.…”

Multimodal representational gestures in the transition to multi‐word productions

“…The form of the gesture depicts some characteristic or attribute of the referent. Gestures such as flapping the hands to refer to a bird, or pretending to drink without a real cup, are examples of this type of gesture that have been called: "enactive gestures" (Zinober & Martlew, 1985), "characterizing gestures" (Goldin-Meadow & Morford, 1990), "symbolic gestures" (Bates et al, 1979(Bates et al, , 1980Fasolo & D'Odorico, 2012), "representational gestures" (Batista et al, 2019;Rowe et al, 2008), or "iconic gestures" (Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2009;Wermelinger et al, 2020).…”