Temporal synchrony in early multi-modal communication

Kelly, Barbara F.

doi:10.1075/tilar.12.11kel

Cited by 6 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…The vast majority of young children’s early gestures appear to be deictic in nature, mainly index-finger POINTS, but they also produce gestures to SHOW, OFFER, or PLACE objects for the other (see Caselli, 1990 ; Liszkowski, 2006 ; Andrén, 2010 ). In his case study of five children up to age 2;6, Andrén (2010) found that these gestures were nearly always (94%) coordinated with speech, with only a few gestures overall occurring on their own (see also Kelly, 2014 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turn-taking: a case study of early gesture and word use in answering WHERE and WHICH questions

Clark

Lindsey

2015

Front. Psychol.

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When young children answer questions, they do so more slowly than adults and appear to have difficulty finding the appropriate words. Because children leave gaps before they respond, it is possible that they could answer faster with gestures than with words. In this study, we compare gestural and verbal responses from one child between the ages of 1;4 and 3;5, to adult Where and Which questions, which can be answered with gestures and/or words. After extracting all adult Where and Which questions and child answers from longitudinal videotaped sessions, we examined the timing from the end of each question to the start of the response, and compared the timing for gestures and words. Child responses could take the form of a gesture or word(s); the latter could be words repeated from the adult question or new words retrieved by the child. Or responses could be complex: a gesture + word repeat, gesture + new word, or word repeat + new word. Gestures were the fastest overall, followed successively by word-repeats, then new-word responses. This ordering, with gestures ahead of words, suggests that the child knows what to answer but needs more time to retrieve any relevant words. In short, word retrieval and articulation appear to be bottlenecks in the timing of responses: both add to the planning required in answering a question.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turn-taking: a case study of early gesture and word use in answering WHERE and WHICH questions

Clark

Lindsey

2015

Front. Psychol.

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“…producing word combinations referring to distinct elements (Kelly, 2014 Most of the juxtaposed verbs are in the imperative, as in examples (36, 37 and 39). This is a pattern also observed in the older child and adult finite verb juxtapositions, as in examples (33-35).…”

Section: Stage I: Finite Juxtapositionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Acquisition of Pitjantjatjara Clause Chains

Defina

2020

Front. Psychol.

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In Pitjantjatjara, a central Australian Indigenous language, speakers typically describe sequences of actions using clause chaining constructions. While similar constructions are common among the world's languages, very little is known about how children acquire them. A notable exception are the converb constructions of Turkish, which have been relatively well-studied. The present paper examines the acquisition of Pitjantjatara clause chaining constructions and compares this with the acquisition of Turkish converb constructions. Data is drawn from a naturalistic corpus recorded between 2016 and 2019. The corpus contains over 4000 utterances from 23 children aged between 10 months and 10 years, five of whom are recorded at multiple ages. The corpus also includes approximately 1600 utterances from 21 adults, aged between 16 and 70. Results show that the acquisition of Pitjantjatjara clause chains consists of three stages. Stage 1 features juxtaposition of finite verb forms. In Stage 2, children make regular use of clause chain morphology, but primarily for modification purposes. In Stage 3, clause chains are the preferred strategy for sequential actions as well as modification purposes. The initial use of verb juxtaposition followed by increasing use of dedicated morphology is consistent with findings for Turkish converb acquisition, with speakers of both languages utilizing dedicated forms from around 2;6 onwards. A notable difference between the acquisition of Pitjantjatjara clause chains and Turkish converbs is in the order of acquisition of semantic functions. In Turkish, children acquire temporal functions, such as sequential actions, before modifying functions, such as manner specification. In Pitjantjatjara, the order is reversed, with children first using clause chaining constructions for modification and simultaneous aspects of events before utilizing them to combine sequential actions. This raises questions regarding the distribution and relative timing of event combination and modification strategies.

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“…Early gesture + word combinations may occur in the order of gesture first, then word, or the reverse. The two elements are not initially synchronized (Kelly, 2014;Murillo et al, 2018; see also Gogate et al, 2000). Butcher and Goldin-Meadow (2000), though, argued that although there is not synchronization for the first gesture + vocalization, there is for the first gesture + word combinations.…”

Section: Timing In Gesture + Word Combinationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Butcher and Goldin-Meadow (2000), though, argued that although there is not synchronization for the first gesture + vocalization, there is for the first gesture + word combinations. More recently, Kelly (2014) and Murillo et al (2018) have shown that when children begin to produce composite utterances, the stroke of their gesture is synchronous with the word they produce. Kelly (2014) followed five children in a small daycare center, and tracked their timing for production of three main gesture types-POINT, REACH (or GIMME), and SHOW (or ATTENTION FOCUS), from around 12 months of age on.…”

Section: Timing In Gesture + Word Combinationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, Kelly (2014) and Murillo et al (2018) have shown that when children begin to produce composite utterances, the stroke of their gesture is synchronous with the word they produce. Kelly (2014) followed five children in a small daycare center, and tracked their timing for production of three main gesture types-POINT, REACH (or GIMME), and SHOW (or ATTENTION FOCUS), from around 12 months of age on. She defined synchrony as coincidence of timing for gesture-stroke and word-production, and found that children seemed to go through two stages: at first, they displayed no synchrony between gesture and word, and their gesture sometimes preceded and sometimes followed the word; then they began to produce the gesture-stroke simultaneously with the word, as illustrated in Examples 6.1 and 6.2 (Kelly, 2014) Murillo and her coauthors ( 2018) also looked at the timing of gestures and words for 10 children, video-recorded every 3 months from the age of 9 to 18 months, as they moved from babbling to producing two-word combinations.…”

Section: Timing In Gesture + Word Combinationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Constructing a system of communication with gestures and words.

Clark¹,

Kelly²

2022

Gesture in Language: Development Across the Lifespan.

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Gestures, along with early words, are critical in children's construction of an early system of communication. From as young as 10 months old, children use locating gestures (usually points), iconic or depicting gestures (with or without props), and conventional gestures like waving or nodding, found in a specific cultural group. In this chapter, we trace the burgeoning field of developmental gesture studies and examine the emergence of gestures as visible utterances, adult responses to children's gestures, and the early use of gesture + word combinations that underpin children's early constructions and ongoing communication. We argue that children use gestures to communicate as a crucial part of language development, for example, pointing to focus attention and to inform and reaching to make requests. Children sometimes accompany early gestures with vocalizations to attract attention and elicit a response. Adults also use gestures to communicate: they gesture to enlist and maintain joint attention in their interactions with infants and young children, and they use gesture and speech together to identify objects as members of categories, to indicate their parts and properties, and to demonstrate motion and function.In early studies of child language, gestures were not taken into account. Researchers were concerned with how children advanced from single-word utterances to their first two-word combinations, and the order in which they added inflections and other grammatical morphemes (e.g., Brown, 1973). Later studies began to look at lexical semantics and at how this affected the acquisition of increasingly complex syntactic constructions (e.g.,

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Temporal synchrony in early multi-modal communication

Cited by 6 publications

References 13 publications

Turn-taking: a case study of early gesture and word use in answering WHERE and WHICH questions

Turn-taking: a case study of early gesture and word use in answering WHERE and WHICH questions

Acquisition of Pitjantjatjara Clause Chains

Constructing a system of communication with gestures and words.

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