title: Effects of age and language on co-speech gesture production: an investigation of French, American, and Italian children's narratives.
abstract: The aim of this paper is to compare speech and co-speech gestures observed during a narrative retelling task in five- and ten-year-old children from three different linguistic groups, French, American, and Italian, in order to better understand the role of age and language in the development of multimodal monologue discourse abilities. We asked 98 five- and ten-year-old children to narrate a short, wordless cartoon. Results showed a common developmental trend as well as linguistic and gesture differences between the three language groups. In all three languages, older children were found to give more detailed narratives, to insert more comments, and to gesture more and use different gestures--specifically gestures that contribute to the narrative structure--than their younger counterparts. Taken together, these findings allow a tentative model of multimodal narrative development in which major changes in later language acquisition occur despite language and culture differences.
authors: Université de Grenoble,LIDILEM,St Martin d'Hères,France.
authors: Jean-Marc
authors: JM
authors: Colletta
authors: Université Toulouse 2,Octogone ECCD,Toulouse,France.
authors: Michèle
authors: M
authors: Guidetti
authors: CNR, GLADD, Rome,Italy.
authors: Olga
authors: O
authors: Capirci
authors: University of Naples L'Orientale,Naples,Italy.
authors: Carla
authors: C
authors: Cristilli
authors: Northwestern University,Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab,Evanston, ILL,USA.
authors: Ozlem Ece
authors: OE
authors: Demir
authors: University of Witwatersrand,Johannesburg,RSA.
authors: Ramona N
authors: RN
authors: Kunene-Nicolas
authors: University of Chicago,Department of Psychology,Chicago, ILL,USA.
authors: Susan
authors: S
authors: Levine
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D005602:France; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008037:Linguistics; D033262:Narration; D013060:Speech; D014481:United States