Gesture-speech integration in narrative: Are children less redundant than adults?

Speakers sometimes express information in gestures that they do not express in speech. In this research, we developed a system that could be used to assess the redundancy of gesture and speech in a narrative task. We then applied this system to examine whether children and adults produce non-redundant gesture-speech combinations at similar rates. The coding system was developed based on a sample of 30 children. A crucial feature of the system is that gesture meanings can be assessed based on form alone; thus, the meanings speakers express in gesture and speech can be assessed independently and compared. We then collected narrative data from a new sample of 17 children (ages 5-10), as well as a sample of 20 adults, and we determined the average proportion of non-redundant gesture-speech combinations produced by individuals in each group. Children produced more non-redundant gesture-speech combinations than adults, both at the clause level and at the word level. These findings suggest that gesture-speech integration is not constant over the life span, but instead appears to change with development.