title: Children use gesture to interpret novel verb meanings.
abstract: Children often find it difficult to map verbs to specific referents within complex scenes, often believing that additional features are part of the referents. This study investigated whether 3-year-olds could use iconic gestures to map novel verbs to specific referents. One hundred and twenty children were taught verbs that could be interpreted as change-of-state or manner verbs while presented with manner, end-state, or no iconic gestures. Children were then presented with a choice that forced them to generalize either on the basis of manner or end state. Results showed that children who saw manner gestures showed a stronger manner bias compared to the other groups. Thus, the specific feature of an event encoded in gestures guides children's interpretations of novel words.
authors.affiliation: University of Birmingham.
authors.forename: Katherine H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Mumford
authors.affiliation: University of Birmingham.
authors.forename: Sotaro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kita
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*