Why iconic gestures aren’t very iconic

1. Why iconic gestures aren’t very iconic Elena Nicoladis

2. Gestures and thought • Gestures are often used in conjunction with speech • Have complementary meaning • Timed with speech • Thoughts are conveyed by gesture + speech (McNeill, 1996)

3. Why do people gesture? • To help lexical retrieval • Evidence: Tip-of-the-Tongue experiment with hands free or not free • To help listeners understand • Evidence: Gestures are produced at low frequency word combinations • Note that in conversations, both could be true

4. This talk • How do different kinds of gestures relate to speech? • Gesture development • Do gestures compensate for missing or weak speech? • Study of French-English bilingual children

5. Gesture development: prelinguistic gestures • Conventional gestures • Appear around 9 mos. • Symbolic gestures • Appear before words; disappear when words acquired • Deictic or pointing gestures • Appear around 9-12 mos. • Usually with vocalizations

6. Prelinguistic gestures may all be conventional • Symbolic gestures probably are learned from adults • Deictic gestures vary from culture to culture • Ghanian mouth point

7. Gesture development: with-language gestures • Iconic gestures: resemble referent • Emerge around age of 2 years • Correlated with proficiency in French-English bilingual preschoolers between 2;0 and 3;6 • Beat gestures: keep time • Rarely seen in the preschool years

8. Do gestures compensate for weak or absent speech? • Deaf people (home signs) • Bilinguals (one language usually weaker) • Elderly • Aphasics

9. Iconic gestures rarely compensate • Deaf children with oral training use words rather than gestures • Elderly people use fewer iconic gestures than younger people • Intermediate bilinguals use fewer iconic gestures in their L2 than their L1 • Advanced bilinguals use equal rates of iconic gestures in their L1 and L2

10. Other gestures can compensate • First home signs are mostly conventional gestures and deictic gestures • Broca’s aphasics can still use conventional and deictic gestures • Both intermediate and advanced bilinguals use more deictics in their L2 than their L1

11. Different gestures, different relationship to speech • Prelinguistic gestures can compensate for weak or absent speech • “With-language” gestures do not compensate for weak or absent speech • Home signs can be iconic but only after a communicative system has been established

12. This study • How are different kinds of gestures related to speech? • Are iconic gestures more closely linked to speech than other kinds of gestures?

13. This study: Research Questions • Does the rate of gestures relate to proficiency? • Do children create longer utterances with iconic gestures • Do children use “speechless” gestures to compensate for weak proficiency? • Are iconic gestures used in cases of word-finding difficulty?

14. This study: Participants • Eight French-English bilingual children • Between 3;6 and 4;11 • Average age: 4;3 • 4 French-dominant children and 4 English-dominant children • Videotaped in two free-play sessions: • French session • English session

15. Results: Gesture by dominance Conventional gestures

16. Results: Gesture by dominance Deictics

17. Results: Gesture by dominance Iconics

18. Summary: Gesture by dominance • These children used more iconic gestures in their dominant language • They did not use more conventional and deictic gestures in their dominant language

19. Results: Longer utterances?

20. Results: “speechless” gestures

21. Results: Word finding difficulties • Jason (3;7) “It goes like this.” • Gesture meaning: path of movement from a vehicle pictured in a book • 1/22 iconic gestures • Aidan (4;11): “So it can go like this and like this.” • Gesture meaning: looping paths that the train tracks they are building should do • 6/9 iconic gestures

22. Summary of results #1 • Conventional and deictic gestures • Are not used more often with dominant language • Do not lead to longer sentences • Are used more often without speech when trying to communicate in weaker language

23. Summary of results #2 • Iconic gestures • Are used more often with dominant language • Produced with longer sentences • Are not used more often without speech when trying to communicate in weaker language • Are occasionally used in cases of word-finding difficulty, possibly increasing with age

24. Iconic gestures aren’t very iconic • They can only be produced when someone knows a language well • This holds true even for bilinguals who CAN produce iconics in their other language • At least one function of iconics may be to “hold down” some concepts while thinking of others (hence, longer utterances possible)

25. Iconic gestures aren’t very iconic • We also have some evidence that the interpretation of iconic gestures is highly dependent on what someone says

26. A troubling question… • Why is the rate of iconic production different by language? • Italians vs. English speakers • Spanish vs. English speakers • Chinese speakers

27. Some possible answers • English speakers think less complex thoughts than Italian and Spanish speakers • The fact that iconic gestures are produced is due to cognitive development. The rate of cognitive gestures is due to cultural variables. • Other ideas??