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Young children make their gestural communication systems more language-like : segmentation and linearization of semantic elements in motion events
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Clay, Zanna, Pople, Sally, Hood, Bruce and Kita, Sotaro (2014) Young children make their gestural communication systems more language-like : segmentation and linearization of semantic elements in motion events. Psychological Science, Volume 25 (Number 8). pp. 1518-1525. doi:10.1177/0956797614533967
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797614533967
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.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science > Psychology | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Language acquisition, Nicaraguan Sign Language, Gesture | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Psychological Science | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0956-7976 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | August 2014 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | Volume 25 | ||||||||
| Number: | Number 8 | ||||||||
| Number of Pages: | 8 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 1518-1525 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1177/0956797614533967 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Adapted As: | |||||||||
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