gesture and late speech development colloque aflico « typologie, gestes et signes », lille, 10-12...
TRANSCRIPT
Gesture and late speech development
Colloque AFLiCo « Typologie, gestes et signes », Lille, 10-12 mai 2007
Jean-Marc Colletta
Lidilem IUFM et université Stendhal, Grenoble
• Language acquisition is far from achieved when the child enters primary school, and the development of discourse abilities is a major issue in later language acquisition.
• 1. Discourse is a complex form of language built at the textual level, and the current adult use of language relies on the ability to understand and generate linguistic information organised at this level (Fayol, 1997)
• 2. Discourse displays specific properties of cohesion and coherence which have no equivalent in the course of dialogue built out of the sequencing of short speech turns (Halliday & Hasan, 1976 ; Heydrich & al., 1989 ; Adam, 1992, 1999)
• 3. Discourse is language which relies both on reference displacement, decontextualization and cognitive decentration, and which allows the speaker either to talk about facts that are not experienced in the context of the present social interaction, or to talk about supposed, past or fictionous facts (Karmiloff-Smith, 1979 ; Hickmann, 2003)
• 4. All these features define the written use of langage, so that later speech development is directly related to the acquisition of writing and reading abilities (Golder, 1996 ; Fayol, 2000 ; Hickmann, 2003)
• 5. As a consequence, the study of discourse development in oral communication may shed some light on the way children acquire literacy abilities and its milestones
Late speech
development
is
discourse
development
Two basic
uses of
language
Karmiloff-Smith, 1979
Roulet et al, 1985
Dialogal use Monologal use
Speech behaviour Plural wording Individual wording
Grounding
discourse co-constructed by
speakers throughout their exchange(s)
discourse constructed by single speaker/writer within his speech turn /
written text
Cognitive
constraints
Minimum constraints due to joint attention and shared context
Maximum constraints due to contextualisation
and planification of discourse
Dialogal use (two children argue about work and play at school) :
• Raph 0 on peut s'amuser quand on a fini not‘ travail• Kev 1 non - non - non - non non• Raph 2 -::- ben si s'amuser ça peut êt' lire un livre • Kev 3 oui mais dans la cou:r - dans la cour • Raph 4 -:- oui: dans la cour (et pas d’ s’amu’) - s'amuser -i- s'amus’ • Kev 3’ et pas de faire de bruit - en chuchotant - oui mais en
chuchotant• Raph 4’ s'amuser ça peut êt' (x) - lire un livre hein• Kev 5 ben oui mais en chuchotant• Raph 6 ou alo:rs avan:t faire heu: (comment ça s’appelle) • Kev 7 (ben:)• Raph 6’ l'imprimerie Lego• Kev 7’ ben oui• Raph 6’’ ça c'est jouer l'imprimerie Lego• Kev 7’’ oui• Raph 6’’’ c'est pas travailler hein • Kev 7’’’ ben oui• Raph 6’’’’ quand même• Kev 8 si - c’est pour - a:apprend' (des) mots• Raph 9 oui c'est pour apprend' (des) mots mais c'est aussi pour jouer• Kev 10 -:::- oui un peu - (m) c'est pour apprend' (des) mots• Raph 11 -:- oui -::- mais c'est quand même un peu pour jouer Kev…• Kev 12 -:- oui
Monologal use (one child briefly recounts a lived event):
moi cé’ -i- (c’est) que j'avais - sans arrêt toujours joué au cutter –
et pis un jour [interr.23s]
et puis je j'arrêtais pas d' m'amuser -i-
et puis - un jour et ben: j'ai: - j' voulai:s frotter contre où c'est li:sse
et puis j' me suis coupé en même temps -i-
et: après heu -i- fallait qu'on m' mette un pansement tout ça
alors (cette fois j'ai compris) qu'i' fallait plus toucher au cutter sans
demander la permission
From oral to
written language
=
from dialogal to
monologal use
Lentin, 1973
François, 1993, 1994
Dialogal use Monologal use
Speech behaviour Plural wording Individual wording
Grounding
discourse co-constructed by
speakers throughout their exchange(s)
discourse constructed by single speaker within
his speech turn(s) or written text
Cognitive
constraints
Minimum constraints due to joint attention and shared context
Maximum constraints due to contextualisation
and planification of discourse
Learning/teaching practices : hearing stories, performing fictionous stories in symbolic play, scaffolded reading, « dictée à l’adulte » and scaffolded oral texts, transcription of oral language, scaffolded writing…
• The investigation of communication behaviour from a multimodal perspective (verbal language + body movements) has been extensively developed within the past 20 years (Kendon, 1980, 1990 ; Cosnier & Brossard, 1984)
• Today, researchers who deal with language and language development begin to be aware of the relevance and significance of such an investigation
• A substantial volume of observation concerning adult speakers and social interaction between adults in various languages is now available (Poggi & Magno Caldognetto, 1997 ; Bouvet, 2001 ; Calbris, 2003 ; Kendon, 2004)
• The multimodal study of child language is not so far advanced, but the available data suggest that the gestural system associated with speech undergoes considerable development after the age of two years (Montagner, 1978 ; McNeill, 1992 ; Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 1998 ; Guidetti, 2003)
• The statement that new gestural behaviour (pointing, representational gestures) arises at the same time as new lexical and syntactic abilities in young children is consistent with this hypothesis (Capirci et al., 1996, 2002 ; Goldin-Meadow & Butcher, 2003 ; Özçaliskan & Goldin-Meadow, 2005)
• Thus, the use of gestures, postures and facial expressions directly linked to speech should develop as the child acquires new cognitive and linguistic abilities
Late speech
development
and
gesture
development
Two corpus
collected in
two distinct
settings
• « Corpus Jean Macé » (6h30) Colletta, 2000, 2001, 2004
- video recorded interviews of 60 children aged from 6 to 11 years in a primary school. - Groups of 3-4 children with the same age interviewed by an adult on family and social topics. The goal was priorily to elicit verbal explanations, eventually to elicit other discourse forms such as narratives, verbal depictions, arguing sequences.
• « Corpus Maternelle » (6h00) Colletta, Simon & Lachnitt, 2005
- video recorded nursery classroom interactions during which teachers try to elicit explanations from their young pupils. - 3 to 6 years old children from 12 classes perform verbal explanations during experiments on air and on water themes, art workshops, sessions involving logical reasoning and language sessions.
Data
analysis
in both
studies
• Corpus Jean Macé (primary school) was used to: - identify and class coverbal body movements of children
performing discourse (Colletta, 2000, 2004)- study the categorisation of children’s coverbal gestures (Colletta, 2000)- study children’s multimodal narratives and test the effect of age on narrative behaviour (Colletta, 2001, 2004)- study children’s multimodal explanations and test the effect of age on explanation behaviour (Colletta, 2004, Colletta & Pellenq, 2005)
• Corpus Maternelle (nursery school), was used to:- study young children’s multimodal explanations and test the effect of age on explanation behaviour (Colletta, Simon & Lachnitt, 2005 ; Colletta & Pellenq, 2005)
• Next slides present:1. Information about children’s coverbal gestures2. Results from the study of their narratives3. Results from the study of their explanations
• Deixis: identify referents with direct pointing
• Representation: depict concret objects and places, mime concrete actions, symbolise abstracts objects and relations with gestural metaphors and abstract pointing
• Framing and expressivity: express speech acts (salutation, congratulation, invitation, request, refusal, etc.), mental states (reflection, word searching, connotation of speech with evidence, possibility, doubt, etc.) and emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, etc.)
• Segmentation and cohesion: marks syntactic units (syllable, word, group, clause, sentence) and discourse structure (text sequences, connectors, anaphoras)
• Interactive: marks speech-turn alternance and synchronisation (head nods and feedbak signals, contact behavior and phatic signals)
Main
functions of
communicative
body
movements
Ekman & Friesen, 1969 ; Cosnier, 1982 ; Scherer, 1984 ; McNeill, 1992 ; Calbris, 1997 ; Kendon, 2004 ; ANR Multimodality project, 2007
Children’s pointing and representational gestures (ex.) :Children’s pointing and representational gestures (ex.) :
Children’s framing, rythmic and interactive gestures (ex.) :Children’s framing, rythmic and interactive gestures (ex.) :
Regarde… des matelas une couverture un plat
Ben… (évidence) Beats rythmiques Et voilà !
Children’s abstract representational gestures (ex.) :Children’s abstract representational gestures (ex.) :
‘sque - les parents - les parents heu: - avant i’s connaissent pas
si moi chus fait - chus bien fait par quelqu’un
Puisqu’i z’ont une mère – elle s’appelle Martin
Et le père Martinez
Et ben le nom d’ famille ce s’ra Martinez
The effect of discourse on coverbal gesture
at primary school (Corpus Jean Macé) :
‘Paraverbal’ gestures (abstract
beats, cohesive)
Expressive gesture
Concrete Referential
gesture
Other Coverbal gesture
Explanation 52.50 28.50 17.50 01.50
Description 22.00 17.50 57.50 03.00
Narrative 29.50 23.50 42.00 05.00
Argumentation 19.00 56.00 10.00 15.00
< looks at the adult …………… > < looks at the adult …………………………….. >
(6) Ama : Et aussi son frère il est mort heu - pas’qu'il avait - il avait un casque sur la tête - 'fin c'est - (a) gesture representing earpieces on ears
—————————————————————————————————————————————— < looks at the adult > < looks at the camcorder ………………….. >< wears an embarrassed smile and an unhappy face ………………… then an amused smile ………………... >
c'est une heu - famille un peu barjot quoi - (peut) dire ça - 'fin si vous lui montrez pas la cassette (b) symbol of madness same gesture (b) indicates the camcorder which is recording her—————————————————————————————————————————————— (c) (d) < changes posture> ……… {interr.2s} et ben il avait mis un casque sur la tête et il est mort à cause de - parce qu'il —————————————————————————————————————————————— (e) < surprised voice, almost whispering ………… > ……… ……… était allé chercher l' pain - et c'était pas un le jour c'était la nuit chais pas pourquoi il était allé - (e) face expresses astonishment and incomprehension—————————————————————————————————————————————— (f) < looks at the adult …………………...> < low voice ………………………………………..> …… 'm'a raconté ça pas'que mon père il était présent - et i' voulait traverser il écoutait d' la musique —————————————————————————————————————————————— (g) et tout et au moment où i' ferme les yeux pour traverser y a un train qui passe - R hand traces a straight line on the table——————————————————————————————————————————————< (h) looks at the adult ………………………. > ……………….. … et il avait deux trous dans la tête - aaahhh (h) R hand points to temple symbol of disgust
Translation : and his brother too he's dead um, because he had, he was wearing headphones on his head, but, it's a bit of a loony family you could say, well if you don't show him the videotape […] well he put headphones on his head and he got killed because, um, because he went to fetch the bread, and it wasn't daylight it was very dark, I don't know why he went there, someone told me that because my dad was there, and he wanted to cross and he was listening to music and just when he closed his eyes to cross there was a train going past, and he had two holes in his head, aaahhh(Ama, a 10-year-old French girl, tells of the circumstances surrounding the death of an adolescent from her district)
• Ama. announces: < and his brother too he's dead > • recounts: < because he had headphones on his head >• explains: < it's a bit of a loony family >• comments : < you could say >• comments : < if you don't show him the videotape >• recounts: < he put headphones on […] and he got killed >• explains: < because he went to fetch bread and it wasn't daylight>• comments : < I don't know why >• comments : < someone told me that because […] >• recounts the continuation: < he wanted to cross […] he had two holes in his head >• comments : < aaahhh >
< looks at the adult …………… > < looks at the adult …………………………….. >
(6) Ama : Et aussi son frère il est mort heu - pas’qu'il avait - il avait un casque sur la tête - 'fin c'est - (a) gesture representing earpieces on ears—————————————————————————————————————————————— < looks at the adult > < looks at the camcorder …………………….. >< wears an embarrassed smile and an unhappy face ………………… then an amused smile ………………... > c'est une heu - famille un peu barjot quoi - (peut) dire ça - 'fin si vous lui montrez pas la cassette (b) symbol of madness same gesture (b) indicates the camcorder which is recording him—————————————————————————————————————————————— (c) (d) < changes posture> ……… {interr.2s} et ben il avait mis un casque sur la tête et il est mort à cause de - parce qu'il —————————————————————————————————————————————— (e) < surprised voice, almost whispering ………… > ……… ……… était allé chercher l' pain - et c'était pas un le jour c'était la nuit chais pas pourquoi il était allé - (e) face expresses astonishment and incomprehension—————————————————————————————————————————————— (f) < looks at the adult …………………...> < low voice ………………………………………..> …… 'm'a raconté ça pas'que mon père il était présent - et i' voulait traverser il écoutait d' la musique —————————————————————————————————————————————— (g) et tout et au moment où i' ferme les yeux pour traverser y a un train qui passe - R hand traces a straight line on the table——————————————————————————————————————————————< (h) looks at the adult ………………………. > ……………….. … et il avait deux trous dans la tête - aaahhh (h) R hand points to temple symbol of disgust
Referential gestures which complement speech
Emblem which reinforces speech
No phatic look while narrating the events
Posture change marks backtracking in event frame
Voice & face marks metanarrative comments No phatic look while
narrating the events
Multimodal final expressive comment
(b) < … higher voice ………………………………... …………………… ……………………………
(4) Ju. ben moi j' l'ai dit à mon - à ma mère - ma mère elle a dit oui:: oui:: dis le surtout pas à papa pas'que (a) facial expression meaning "catastrophe!"») (b) mimics mother's attitudes and voice ——————————————————————————————————————————————……… > ……… sinon - sss e t:: ÷ et moi j' l'ai dit à mon père ÷ et - il a et - j'- j'- j' lu' ai montré
(c) symbol indicating "catastrophe! " amused expression —————————————————————————————————————————————— (d) < voix + élevée et + forte ……………………………………. ……….…….……… ……..……………..comment on faisait - il a dit - mais c'est pas vrai c'est pas comme ça qu'i' faut faire hè (d) mimics father's voice and attitudes ——————————————————————————————————————————————…………………………………………… > < (e) subdued voice, high speech rate …………………… > ……………………………. ………- moi j' vais t'apprendre autrement heu j'ai dit ouais ouais j’ai tout compris j'avais rien compris (d) (continued) —————————————————————————————————————————————— (f) < ……… laughing voice……… > - c’est ça laisse moi faire tranquille heu (f) amused expression
Translation : well, me, I told my mum, my mum said please don't tell daddy otherwise, sss, and I told daddy… and he, and I, I showed him how to do it, he said, but it isn't true, you don't do it like that, well, me I'll show you a different way to do it, I said I'd understood I hadn't understood anything, that's it leave me in peace(Ju., a 9-year-old French girl, who tells what happened when she told her parents how her
teacher taught her how to do division sums using a modern method)
(b) < … higher voice ………………………………... …………………… ……………………………
(4) Ju. ben moi j' l'ai dit à mon - à ma mère - ma mère elle a dit oui:: oui:: dis le surtout pas à papa pas'que (a) facial expression meaning "catastrophe!"») (b) mimics mother's attitudes and voice ——————————————————————————————————————————————……… > ……… sinon - sss e t:: ÷ et moi j' l'ai dit à mon père ÷ et - il a et - j'- j'- j' lu' ai montré
(symbol indicating "catastrophe!" then amused expression —————————————————————————————————————————————— (d) < voix + élevée et + forte ……………………………………. ……….…….……… ……..……………..comment on faisait - il a dit - mais c'est pas vrai c'est pas comme ça qu'i' faut faire hè (d) mimics father's voice and attitudes ——————————————————————————————————————————————…………………………………………… > < (e) subdued voice, high speech rate …………………… > ……………………………. ………- moi j' vais t'apprendre autrement heu j'ai dit ouais ouais j’ai tout compris j'avais rien compris (d) (continued) —————————————————————————————————————————————— (f) < ……… laughing voice……… > - c’est ça laisse moi faire tranquille heu (f) amused expression
Emblems adding information to speech
Role taking through voice & body movements
Voice change marks faster processing of the event frame
Multimodal final evaluative comment
Ju. recounts: < I told my mum […] I hadn't understood anything >comments: < that’s it leave me in peace >
Ju. recounts: < I told my mum > facial comment: < catastrophe ! > recounts what follows: < my mum said […] and I told daddy > facial comment: < catastrophe !, wait, you're going to laugh ! > recounts what follows: < I showed him how to do it […] I hadn't understood anything > comments: < that’s it leave me in peace >
WRONG !!!
Discourse construction Voice and prosody
Body movements Gaze
1narrative short, linear and
elliptical, hesitant when longerundifferentiated
prosodic contoursfixed posture and facial
expression, no representational gestures
avoidance or
continuous eye contact
2level 1 narrative including at
least one distinctive feature of a level 3 narrative (recap,
parenthetical statement, final comment, etc.)
sparsely differentiated
prosodic contours
sparse changes in posture, facial expression and
gestures
phatic eye looks
3
detailed narrative with possible recapitulation of initial situation, descriptive,
explanatory, evaluative or other parenthetical
interruptions, final comment, use of reported speech technique, may include
verbalisation of emotions and the use of modalities
prosodic contours differentiated as a
function of narrative value of utterance
(event level, parenthetical
digression, comment), voice
mimicking individuals involved in reported speech
interactive and representational gestures, various facial expressions, dramatisation of narrative
through localisation of objects and characters in available space, acting out
of roles
phatic eye looks +
patterns differentia
ted as a function of narrative value of
the utterance
Three levels in narrative behaviour in children aged from 6 to 11 years
age and level of performance of the children's narratives (n)
0
5
10
CP CE1 CE2 CM1 CM2
niv.3
niv.2
niv.1
age and level of performance of the children's narratives (%)
0
50
100
niv.3
niv.2
niv.1
Development of narrative behaviour as a function of age: French children
To summarise our observations on 32 narratives :
1. At 6-7 years, the monologue-type narrative still constitutes a cognitively costly task; children give short, hesitant accounts and make little use of prosodic and kinesic resources.
2. Subsequently, children’s event reports become more substantial and they comment on the recounted events, thus starting to adopt the role of narrator.
3. Later, as of 9-11 years, the event reports become more detailed and are accompanied by backtracking through the event frame and various types of parenthetical statement and comments. Children commonly use bodily resources to mark transitions and various aspects of their narrative, and they recount events by positioning themselves as narrator.
Expository
discourse
and verbal
explanations
• Explanation might be defined as a written expository text or an oral expository discourse which links an explanandum (P) to an explanans (Q) (Grize, 1990 ; Veneziano & Sinclair, 1995 ; Adam, 1992) :
< P because Q >
• But the interactive properties of social interaction often lead to a separate formulation of P and Q :
Speaker 1 : « why P ? » Speaker 2 : « because Q »
• Simple explanation contains either one proposition, or a few which are not bound logically or chronologically :
« parce qu’elle est punie »« parce que c’est rouge et ça sent la fraise »
• Complex explanation contains two or more propositions which are bound to each other logically or chronologically (Colletta, Simon, Lachnitt, 2005) :
« parce que si tu lances en arrière ça tombe sur la tête et après t’es mort »
Why study
the
evolution of
explanation
behaviour
in children ?
• The child’s first « explanations » occur before the end of the second year of age, as justifications for requests, refusals or behaviour of the young child, and they are closely related to their context (Veneziano et Sinclair, 1995; Dubost, 1998 ; Gauthier, 1998)
• By the end of primary school, children are able to perform expository discourse i.e. 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 expository discourse, the child learns to use language as a decontextualisation device, and learns linguistic (and prosodic and kinesic) means of coherence and cohesion
• Studying children’s explanations at various ages may proove to be a nice window into discourse development
Studying
children’s
explanations
• Two empirical studies based on data collected in nursery and primary schools
• From « corpus Jean Macé » (primary school) 268 monologal explanations were extracted. Results showed an age effect on lenght, linguistic information (syllables, connectives, clauses) and coverbal information
• From « corpus Maternelle » (nursery school) 232 monologal explanations were extracted. Results showed an age effect on lenght, number of connectives and number of clauses
• The contexts in which those explanations were verbalised are too different to allow comparison of their content, but we were interested in their form rather than in their content.
• We joined our two sets of data and completed the missing informations to allow comparison (Colletta & Pellenq, 2005)
Main results (children aged from 3 to 11 years)
Ps
3-4
Ms
4-5
Gs
5-6
Cp
6-7
Ce
7-9
Cm
9-11
Time lengh (s) 2.10 4.43 4.05 7.00 9.38 10.56
syllables (n) 7.13 12.35 13.08 23.23 30.69 39.32
clauses (n) 1.13 1.44 1.61 2.37 3.28 3.70
connectives (n) 1.08 1.40 1.70 3.10 3.47 4.67
Coverbal gestures (n) 0.31 0.75 0.98 2.23 2.48 3.47
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Moy
. des
cel
lule
s po
ur d
urée
(s)
1 (ps) 2 (ms.gs) 3 (cp.ce) 4 (cm)
Diag. en bâtonsVariable(s) de groupe : ages 4 nvxBarres d’erreurs : ± 1 Erreur(s) standard(s)
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Moy
. des
cel
lule
s po
ur in
fo-s
ylla
bes
(n)
1 (ps) 2 (ms.gs) 3 (cp.ce) 4 (cm)
Diag. en bâtonsVariable(s) de groupe : ages 4 nvxBarres d’erreurs : ± 1 Erreur(s) standard(s)
0
,5
1
1,5
2
2,5
3
3,5
4
Moy
. des
cel
lule
s po
ur p
ropo
sitio
ns (
n)
1 (ps) 2 (ms.gs) 3 (cp.ce) 4 (cm)
Diag. en bâtonsVariable(s) de groupe : ages 4 nvxBarres d’erreurs : ± 1 Erreur(s) standard(s)
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Moy
. des
cel
lule
s po
ur c
onne
cteu
rs (
n)
1 (ps) 2 (ms.gs) 3 (cp.ce) 4 (cm)
Diag. en bâtonsVariable(s) de groupe : ages 4 nvxBarres d’erreurs : ± 1 Erreur(s) standard(s)
0
,5
1
1,5
2
2,5
3
3,5
4
Moy
. des
cel
lule
s po
ur n
. cov
erba
ux
1 ps 2 msgs 3 cpce 4 cm
Diag. en bâtonsVariable(s) de groupe : age 4 nvxBarres d’erreurs : ± 1 Erreur(s) standard(s)
1 38 39
47 182 229
76 48 124
90 18 108
214 286 500
complexe simple Totaux
1 (ps)
2 (ms.gs)
3 (cp.ce)
4 (cm)
Totaux
Fréquences observ. pour ages 4 nvx, type d'explic.
Structures type
ps < because P >
ms.gs < because P1, P2 >
< because P1, so that P2 >
cp.ce < because if P1, P2 >
< because P1 and P2 otherwise P3 >
cm < because if P1, then P2, otherwise P3 >
< because when P1, P2, and also P3 or P4 >
Use of abstract referential gestures in multimodal explanation
• Substitution pointing CE1.3.Van.3408 (Rsubst).mov
• Representing absent referents CE1.3.Yv.3006 (Rfig).mov
• Anaphoric pointing CM2.3.Mad.0148 (Ranaph).mov
• Localization of abstract referents CP1.Flo.3048 (Rfig).mov
• Oppositions CM1.1.Ja.0047 (Rfig).mov
• Metaphoric content CE1.3.Yv.3006 (Rfig).mov
• Representing time and aspect CM1.1.Ja.1828 (Rfig).mov
• Representing abstract actions CM2.3.Mad.0145 (Rfig).mov CM2.3.Emi.1438 (Rfig).mov
• Representing quantities CM1.1.Ja.1828 (Rfig).mov CM2.3.Jér.2022 (Rfig).mov
• Representing negation and other modal attitudes CM1.3.Lau.1207 (Rfig).mov CE1.5.Si.1845 (Rfig).mov
Explanation’s gesture in nursery chool and primary school
Direct pointings and gestures of the
concrete
Gestures of the abstract
Expressive gesture
Nursery school 88.50 8.00 3.50
Primary school 18.00 53.00 29.00
Typical explanation’s gestures in nursery school
Pointing gestures :
Representational gestures : 1. « elle penche la tête comme ça »
2. « et le chien i’ fait comme ça »
1 2
Further
questions
on late
speech
development
• Discourse development and gesture development seem to be closely related to each other. But we need other studies to confirm our present results and get a more precise picture of the whole process
• Do gesture paves the way for discourse development as it seems to do for prior lexical and syntactic abilities (gestural connexity and anaphora emerging before their linguistic marking) ?
• What is the effect of language on gestural acquisitions ? (languages code variously for space, time, social identity…)
• What is the effect of culture on multimodal acquisitions ? (discourse and the use of gesture vary in form and content from one culture to another)
• Would the observation of coverbal gesture bring any information about SLI children’s conceptualisation and linguistic abilities ?
Further
questions
on cognitive
and
social
development
• Abstract concepts involve analogical reasoning and spatial cognition (Lakoff & Johnson, 1985 ; Johnson, 1987 ; Fauconnier, 1997, 2001)
• Abstract concepts are expressed in gestural languages as well as in oral languages (Armstrong, Stokoe & Wilcox, 1995 ; Emmorey & Reilly, 1995 ; Bloom & al., 1999).
• Relying on metaphors and image schemata, representational gestures are usefull to express abstract concepts (Johnson, 1987 ; McNeill, 1992 ; Gentner, Holyoak & Kokinov, 2001 ; Calbris, 2003)
• Would the observation of gesture+speech abilities be a window into cognitive development ?
• The expression of mental states and the expression of emotions also seem to be related with age
• Would the observation of coverbal expressivity be a window into social-cognitive development ? And what about interindividual differences ?
Merci
de
votre
attention !