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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 12, 2026

Examining Gesture Production in the Presence of Communication Challenges

Examining Gesture Production in the Presence of Communication Challenges

Published on: January 26, 2024

How early do children understand gesture-speech combinations with iconic gestures?

Carmen Stanfield¹, Rebecca Williamson¹, Seyda Ozçalişkan¹

¹Georgia State University.

Journal of Child Language

|March 29, 2013

Summary

Children as young as three years old can understand iconic gestures paired with speech, demonstrating gesture

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Examining Gesture Production in the Presence of Communication Challenges

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Memorization-Based Training and Testing Paradigm for Robust Vocal Identity Recognition in Expressive Speech Using Event-Related Potentials Analysis

Memorization-Based Training and Testing Paradigm for Robust Vocal Identity Recognition in Expressive Speech Using Event-Related Potentials Analysis

Published on: August 9, 2024

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Linguistics
Cognitive Science

Background:

Children's understanding of language involves processing both spoken words and accompanying gestures.
Deictic gestures, which point to referents, are understood by children as early as 18 months when they add new information to speech.
The role of iconic gestures, which visually represent an action or object, in early language comprehension requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how children comprehend gesture+speech combinations where iconic gestures provide novel information.
To determine the age at which children begin to understand iconic co-speech gestures.
To analyze the developmental trajectory of understanding iconic gestures in relation to speech.

Main Methods:

A gesture+speech comprehension task was administered to children aged two to four years.
Children's responses to stimuli involving iconic gestures and accompanying speech were analyzed.
The study focused on instances where the gesture conveyed information absent in the spoken utterance.

Main Results:

Children aged three years demonstrated an understanding of iconic co-speech gestures.
Comprehension of iconic gestures improved with increasing age in the studied group.
Children's ability to integrate gesture and speech information develops throughout early childhood.

Conclusions:

Iconic gestures play a significant role in early language acquisition and comprehension.
Children's capacity to interpret complex communicative signals, including gestures, develops significantly during the preschool years.
This research underscores the multimodal nature of early communication and learning.