title: Young children make their gestural communication systems more language-like: segmentation and linearization of semantic elements in motion events.
abstract: Research on Nicaraguan Sign Language, created by deaf children, has suggested that young children use gestures to segment the semantic elements of events and linearize them in ways similar to those used in signed and spoken languages. However, it is unclear whether this is due to children's learning processes or to a more general effect of iterative learning. We investigated whether typically developing children, without iterative learning, segment and linearize information. Gestures produced in the absence of speech to express a motion event were examined in 4-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and adults (all native English speakers). We compared the proportions of gestural expressions that segmented semantic elements into linear sequences and that encoded them simultaneously. Compared with adolescents and adults, children reshaped the holistic stimuli by segmenting and recombining their semantic features into linearized sequences. A control task on recognition memory ruled out the possibility that this was due to different event perception or memory. Young children spontaneously bring fundamental properties of language into their communication system.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biology, University of Neuchatel.
authors.forename: Zanna
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Clay
authors.affiliation: Adult Speech and Language Therapy Department, Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Sally
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pople
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bristol.
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hood
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Warwick s.kita@warwick.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Sotaro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kita
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D009038:Motion; D012660:Semantics; D006113:United Kingdom; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Nicaraguan Sign Language; iterative learning; language acquisition; pantomime