Why iconic gestures aren

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Why iconic gestures arent very iconic

• Elena Nicoladis

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Gestures and thought

• Gestures are often used in conjunction with
  speech
• Have complementary meaning
• Timed with speech
• Thoughts are conveyed by gesture speech
  (McNeill, 1996)

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Why do people gesture?

• To help lexical retrieval
• Evidence Tip-of-the-Tongue experiment with hands
  free or not free
• To help listeners understand
• Evidence Gestures are produced at low frequency
  word combinations
• Note that in conversations, both could be true

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This talk

• How do different kinds of gestures relate to
  speech?
• Gesture development
• Do gestures compensate for missing or weak
  speech?
• Study of French-English bilingual children

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Gesture development prelinguistic gestures

• Conventional gestures
• Appear around 9 mos.
• Symbolic gestures
• Appear before words disappear when words
  acquired
• Deictic or pointing gestures
• Appear around 9-12 mos.
• Usually with vocalizations

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Prelinguistic gestures may all be conventional

• Symbolic gestures probably are learned from
  adults
• Deictic gestures vary from culture to culture
• Ghanian mouth point

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Gesture development with-language gestures

• Iconic gestures resemble referent
• Emerge around age of 2 years
• Correlated with proficiency in French-English
  bilingual preschoolers between 20 and 36
• Beat gestures keep time
• Rarely seen in the preschool years

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Do gestures compensate for weak or absent speech?

• Deaf people (home signs)
• Bilinguals (one language usually weaker)
• Elderly
• Aphasics

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Iconic gestures rarely compensate

• Deaf children with oral training use words rather
  than gestures
• Elderly people use fewer iconic gestures than
  younger people
• Intermediate bilinguals use fewer iconic gestures
  in their L2 than their L1
• Advanced bilinguals use equal rates of iconic
  gestures in their L1 and L2

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Other gestures can compensate

• First home signs are mostly conventional gestures
  and deictic gestures
• Brocas aphasics can still use conventional and
  deictic gestures
• Both intermediate and advanced bilinguals use
  more deictics in their L2 than their L1

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Different gestures, different relationship to
speech

• Prelinguistic gestures can compensate for weak or
  absent speech
• With-language gestures do not compensate for
  weak or absent speech
• Home signs can be iconic but only after a
  communicative system has been established

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This study

• How are different kinds of gestures related to
  speech?
• Are iconic gestures more closely linked to speech
  than other kinds of gestures?

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This study Research Questions

• Does the rate of gestures relate to proficiency?
• Do children create longer utterances with iconic
  gestures
• Do children use speechless gestures to
  compensate for weak proficiency?
• Are iconic gestures used in cases of word-finding
  difficulty?

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This study Participants

• Eight French-English bilingual children
• Between 36 and 411
• Average age 43
• 4 French-dominant children and 4 English-dominant
  children
• Videotaped in two free-play sessions
• French session
• English session

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Results Gesture by dominance

• Conventional gestures

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Results Gesture by dominance

• Deictics

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Results Gesture by dominance

• Iconics

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Summary Gesture by dominance

• These children used more iconic gestures in their
  dominant language
• They did not use more conventional and deictic
  gestures in their dominant language

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Results Longer utterances?
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Results speechless gestures
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Results Word finding difficulties

• Jason (37) It goes like this.
• Gesture meaning path of movement from a vehicle
  pictured in a book
• 1/22 iconic gestures
• Aidan (411) So it can go like this and like
  this.
• Gesture meaning looping paths that the train
  tracks they are building should do
• 6/9 iconic gestures

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Summary of results 1

• Conventional and deictic gestures
• Are not used more often with dominant language
• Do not lead to longer sentences
• Are used more often without speech when trying to
  communicate in weaker language

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Summary of results 2

• Iconic gestures
• Are used more often with dominant language
• Produced with longer sentences
• Are not used more often without speech when
  trying to communicate in weaker language
• Are occasionally used in cases of word-finding
  difficulty, possibly increasing with age

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Iconic gestures arent very iconic

• They can only be produced when someone knows a
  language well
• This holds true even for bilinguals who CAN
  produce iconics in their other language
• At least one function of iconics may be to hold
  down some concepts while thinking of others
  (hence, longer utterances possible)

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Iconic gestures arent very iconic

• We also have some evidence that the
  interpretation of iconic gestures is highly
  dependent on what someone says

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A troubling question

• Why is the rate of iconic production different by
  language?
• Italians vs. English speakers
• Spanish vs. English speakers
• Chinese speakers

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Some possible answers

• English speakers think less complex thoughts than
  Italian and Spanish speakers
• The fact that iconic gestures are produced is due
  to cognitive development. The rate of cognitive
  gestures is due to cultural variables.
• Other ideas??