Poster #114 - Relations between Parental Gestures and Early Word Learning in Brazil and the United States

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

A substantial literature indicates that gestural and other nonverbal information provided by adults (e.g., direction of gaze, pointing, presenting an object to a child) can promote children’s word learning (e.g., Baldwin, 1996; Carpenter, Nagell & Tomasello, 1998). Much of the past research has been conducted in lab settings within one cultural/linguistic context. Less has involved naturalistic settings or cross-cultural/cross-linguistic comparisons. Both linguistic and cultural differences could lead to differences in the types, frequencies and functions of gestural cues.

Relations between parental gestural cues and word learning may differ for distinct types of gestures: For example, pointing and object presentations are likely to provide more explicit information that a word is referring to a specific object than, for example, simply holding an object. The nature of these relations also may be influenced by characteristics of the child as well as by the propensities of parents: The past evidence that gestures facilitate word learning by clarifying the referent for a word might imply that variation in the tendencies of parents to use referential gestures would lead to differences in word learning. However, it also is possible that the relation could be in the other direction: Children might elicit increased gesture use from their parents when they struggle to comprehend language.

We explored these questions in a short-term longitudinal study conducted in the home with Brazilian-Portuguese (BP) speaking parent-child dyads in Brazil and English-speaking dyads in the United States. Parent-child interactions were recorded at 9, 13, and 18 months in both countries and at 24 months in Brazil, and children’s vocabulary was assessed at each session using the MacArthur-Bates CDI. Parental gestures during labeling in the 9-month session were coded into categories such as points, object presentations, and object holds.

The Brazilian sample provided evidence consistent with a facilitating effect of particular types of gestures: Object presentations at 9 months were positively associated with 24-month noun vocabulary (r = .38, p < .05) and object holds were negatively associated (r = -.41, p < .05). However, for the U.S. sample, an opposite pattern emerged: both object presentations and overall gesture use at 9 months were negatively associated with later noun vocabulary (rs = -.53 and -.52, respectively, ps < .05). Parental points were not significantly related to vocabulary in either sample, possibly because they were relatively infrequent in both (associated with 1% of labeling utterances in the Brazilian and 3% in the U.S. sample).

The differences between the Brazilian and U.S. samples confirm the value of cross-cultural/cross-linguistic comparisons and of distinguishing different types of gestural cues. The negative association between gestural cues and subsequent vocabulary development in the U.S. sample could have occurred because children who had lower vocabulary scores by 18 months already were less proficient in understanding language at 9 months and thus elicited a higher level of gestural cues from their parents. We will discuss this and other possible explanations for this finding, as well as potential accounts for the cross-cultural/cross-linguistic differences, in our presentation.

Authors

• Juliana Prieto Bruckner, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
  Presenting Author

• Chantal Ramirez, The University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cláudia Cardoso-Martins, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catharine H. Echols, The University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author