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Updated: Jun 18, 2026

Examining Gesture Production in the Presence of Communication Challenges
Published on: January 26, 2024
Motoric characteristics of representational gestures produced by young children in a naming task
Paola Pettenati1, Silvia Stefanini, Virginia Volterra
1Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, Italy. pettenati@nemo.unipr.it
Abstract:
This study explores the form of representational gestures produced by forty-five hearing children (age range 2 ; 0-3 ; 1) asked to label pictures in words. Five pictures depicting objects and five pictures depicting actions which elicited more representational gestures were chosen for more detailed analysis. The range of gestures produced for each item varied from 3 to 27 for a total of 128 gestures. Gestures have been analyzed with the same parameters used to describe signs produced by deaf children: handshape, location and movement. Results show that gestures for a given picture exhibit similarities in many of the parameters across children. Some motor characteristics found in the production of hearing toddlers' gestures are similar to those described for early signs. Implications of this similarity between gestural and signed linguistic representations in young children are discussed.
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