Poster #33 - Cardinal Number Gestures In The Home Environment

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Cardinal number (CN) gestures have been speculated to play a role in children’s early number development as they may help to bridge the gap between children’s innate representations of numbers and number words due to their iconic nature (Gunderson et al., 2015). Yet little is known about how children come to learn these gestures. Previous research suggests that children’s knowledge of number words is influenced by parental input (Levine et al, 2010). Furthermore the context in which numerical information is presented can also impact children’s learning. For instance, parents’ number talk that involved counting or labeling large sets (4-10) of present objects was more related to children’s later cardinal number knowledge than other instances of number talk (Gunderson & Levine, 2011).Thus we looked to the home environment for instances of CN gestures and the context in which they occurred.
We did not find a relationship between parental CN gesture input and children’s later number knowledge, however the present study provides a descriptive analysis of how parents and children typically use CN gestures.
59 children and their parents were filmed in their homes engaging in typical daily activities for 90 minutes every 4 months from when the child was 14 months old to when the child was 58 months old. We searched the videos for all uses of CN gestures 1-10 used by the children and primary caregivers. We described the frequency of production, the numerical magnitude of the CN gesture, and the context in which the gesture occurred (e.g. what the gesture referred to and whether it was accompanied by a number word or not).
Spontaneous CN gestures use was very rare. Across all 12 sessions, parents produced an average of 4.63 CN gesture tokens (SD = 7.35) and children produced an average of 7.85 (SD = 9.23). As with number words, parents (t(4)= 3.22 p<0.05) and children (t(4)= 5.04 p<0.01) produce small numerical magnitude via gesture (1-5) much more frequently than larger magnitudes (6-10) [Fig 1].
Children primarily use CN gestures when referring to objects, while parents primarily use CN gestures when practicing the count list with children [Fig 2]. When using CN gestures to refer to objects, both parents and children do so equally when the objects are present.
The majority of both children’s and parents’ CN gestures are accompanied by a number word. As children get older, more of their number words are accompanied by gestures (r=0.68, p=0.015) while fewer of their parents’ words are accompanied by gestures (r=-0.79, p=0.002).
The results of this study provide greater insight into the contexts that CN gestures are typically used in and can inform interventions to increase CN gesture use in the home environment.

Authors

• Madeleine Oswald, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Dominic Gibson, The University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jacob R. Butts, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan C. Levine, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author