Explanations gestures in French children: a window into abstract thought

1
Explanations gestures in French children a
window into abstract thought ?
I.S.G.S. Third International Conference  Integrat
ing Gestures  June, 18-21, 2007, Evanston,
Illinois
Jean-Marc Colletta Catherine Pellenq Lidilem
L.S.E. IUFM de Grenoble (France) Jean-marc.colle
tta_at_u-grenoble3.fr
2
Why study explanation behaviour in children
?

• The childs first explanations occur before the
  end of the second year of age in speech, as
  justifications for requests, refusals or
  behaviour, and they are closely related to their
  context (Veneziano et Sinclair, 1995 Dubost,
  1998  Gauthier, 1998)
• By the end of primary school, children begin to
  master explanatory discourse in writing, e.g.
  give reasons or causes for physical or natural
  phenomenons, and motives for social events,
  decisions or behaviour (Golder, 1996)
• From the first embedded justifications to proper
  explanatory discourse, the child learns to use
  language as a decontextualisation device, and
  acquires linguistic (and prosodic and kinesic ?)
  means of coherence and cohesion
• Studying childrens explanations at various ages
  may prove to be a window into discourse
  development, related to gesture development

3
Studying childrens multimodal explanations

• Two empirical studies based on data collected in
  nursery and primary schools
• Out of a corpus from primary school, 268
  monologal explanations were extracted. Results
  showed an age effect on length, linguistic
  information (syllables, connectives, clauses) and
  gestural information (coverbal gestures)
• Out of a corpus from nursery school, 232
  monologal explanations were extracted. Results
  showed an age effect on length, number of
  connectives and number of clauses
• The contexts in which those explanations were
  verbalised are too different to allow comparison
  on the basis of content, yet they allow
  comparison on the basis of form
• We joined our two sets of data and completed the
  missing informations to allow comparison
  (Colletta Pellenq, 2005)

4
Main results (children aged from 3 to 11 years)
5
As explanation behaviour gains in linguistic
complexity, it gains in kinesic markings
but those markings differ considerably when
considering age groups
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Age and explanations gestures

• Our results show a tremendous difference in the
  use of gesture between younger and older children
  
• - Direct pointing vs abstract pointing
• - Gestures to represent concrete objects and
  actions vs gestures to represent abstract
  concepts
• Our results bring some support to the thesis of a
  developmental evolution of coverbal gestures
  during childhood (McNeill, 1992 Capirci et al.,
  2005 Volterra et al., 2005)
• McNeill (1992) opposes  gestures of the
  concrete  to  gestures of the abstract  and
  claims that the latest appear lately in
  childrens gesture repertoire
• Is this broad distinction sufficent to account
  for the developmental evolution of the childs
  use of gestures ?
• We claim that the notion of abstraction needs
  clarification before being used to study
  childrens coverbal gesture from a developmental
  point of view

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About abstraction and abstract thought

• Abstraction is linked with perception (Barsalou,
  1999), memory (Mandler Johnson, 1977),
  categorisation (Piaget, 1967), and language
  (Rosch, 1978 Karmiloff-Smith, 1979 Gentner,
  Holyoak Kokinov, 2001)
• Abstraction is commonly defined as the cognitive
  operation of extracting an object, a property or
  a relationship from the physical world, or from
  its mental representations
• Abstraction also refers to language and  to the
  abstractedness of concepts, ranging from concrete
  (e.g. hat) to abstract (e.g. courage) 
  (Barsalou, 2003)
• Abstract concepts involve analogical reasoning
  and spatial cognition (Lakoff Johnson, 1985
  Johnson, 1987 Fauconnier, 1997 Gentner,
  Holyoak Kokinov, 2001)

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Abstraction in gesturalexpression

• Abstract concepts are expressed in gesture (and
  gestural languages) through visual metaphors and
  image schemata (Johnson, 1987 Kendon, 1992
  McNeill, 1992 Calbris, 2003 Gatis, 2005)
• but the first representational gestures (Piaget
  and the  mouth opening  gesture) already rely
  on the abstraction of the properties of objects
  and actions !
• Abstract pointing relies on the use of space to
  locate abstract referents, and time (successive
  locations) for anaphoric pointing (McNeill, 1992
  Bouvet, 2001)
• But direct pointing is indexation of an object
  or an event (Leslie et al., 1998 Tomasello,
  2004 Nelson, 1986), therefore, direct pointing
  relies on the abstraction properties of
  perception !
• gtgtgt Where does  abstraction  begin in gestural
  signs ?
• gtgtgt Just having in mind pointing gestures and
  the so called  abstract pointings  do they
  all present the same degree of abstraction ?
• gtgtgt And what about representational gestures ?

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Degrees of abstraction in pointing gestures

• deictic pointing
• indexes and locates in situ the
  visible/perceptible physical referent
• (object, person, event, sound, space, )
• directional pointing
• indexes and locates in situ the non
  visible/perceptible physical referent
• substitution pointing
• indexes and locates in situ a visible/perceptible
  referent which represents the absent physical
  referent, on the basis of perceptual analogy
• location pointing to physical referent
• locates in personal space the non
  visible/perceptible physical referent
• location pointing to abstract referent
• locates in personal space the abstract referent
• (non physical referent, category, relation)
• time pointing
• indexes time, on the basis of conceptual analogy

10

• In situ mime of actions and processes
• abstraction of kinetic properties of
  visible/perceptible actions or processes
  (physical movements, practical actions,
  behaviour, mechanisms)
• In situ depiction of objects and persons
• abstraction of objectal properties of
  visible/perceptible objects or persons (shape,
  dimension, aspect)
• representation of actions and processes
• reenactment of kinetic properties of non
  visible/perceptible actions or processes
• representation of objects
• reenactment of objectal properties of non
  visible/perceptible objects or persons
• representation of space
• abstraction of topologic properties of non
  visible/perceptible places and scenes (positions,
  paths), expressed in location and mime
• representation of abstract referents
• use of mime, depiction or location to expresse
  abstract referents
• (non physical referent, category, relation), on
  the basis of conceptual analogy (metonymy or
  metaphor)

Degrees of abstraction in repre-sentational
gestures
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5 criteria to assessabstraction in
gesturalexpression

• Reference in preasentia / in abstentia
• Visibility / perceptibility of reference
• Physicality of reference
• Use of perceptual / conceptual analogy
• Respect for discourse constraints

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• The multimodal study of the childs explanatory
  behaviour shows a fair evolutionary trend which
  affects the use of gesture as well as the
  linguistic form of explanations
• It also shows the abstractedness of gestures
  which accompany the childs explanations
• There may be a close relation between gesture
  development and the develomental evolution of
  abstract thought
• Yet, abstraction in gestural expressions needs to
  be defined more precisely
• Based on empirical data, our proposal will have
  to be tested and refined in future investigations

Summary
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