Poster
Iverson, Jana M.
(University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh)
“Who’s Drinking ?” Production and Comprehension
of Iconic Gestures in Preschoolers
Young children frequently communicate with iconic gestures (e.g.,
bringing a C-shaped hand toward the mouth to request a drink) ; but
their comprehension of such gestures is relatively poor. The purpose
of this study was to test the hypothesis that poor gesture comprehension
refl ects diffi culty appreciating the link between gesture
form and its referent. Twenty children (12 females, 8 males) aged
2-5 years participated in two tasks : a) production, in which children
were asked to produce gestures for 12 common actions (e.g., drinking) ;
and b) comprehension, in which children were asked to indicate
which of two characters performing an iconic gesture in a split
screen video was doing so correctly (e.g., “who’s drinking ?”). Data
indicated that younger but not older children performed better on
production than comprehension and that the form of gestures produced
predicted comprehension performance. Results are discussed
in terms of current theories of symbolic development.
