The Role of Spontaneous Iconic Number Gestures in Children’s Home Environment

• In Event: Parents’ Role in Children’s Numeracy Development: A Focus on Numeracy Gesturing and Talk

Abstract

Learning the exact meaning of number words is an important yet difficult milestone in children’s mathematic development (e.g. Claessens & Engel, 2013; Jordan et al., 2009). A large body of work suggests that iconic number gestures (e.g., raising two fingers to indicate ‘two’) could play a role in supporting children’s mapping of number words to exact quantities (e.g. Butterworth, 1999; Gunderson et al., 2015). Children are adept at recognizing and using iconic number gestures in laboratory settings by age 3 (Gibson, 2017; Nicoladis et al., 2018). However, it is unclear if this is reflective of children’s use of number gestures and/or observations of others using them during naturalistic interactions. Furthermore, the mechanism(s) by which such gestures benefit symbolic number learning are not well understood. In 2 studies we explore how children’s use of and exposure to iconic number gestures in a naturalistic environment relates to their understanding and use of number words.

Study 1 examined how and when 59 children spontaneously use iconic number gestures in naturalistic interactions with their parents longitudinally from child age 14-58 months. Iconic number gestures were infrequent as compared to number words (MChildGesture=6.27; MChildWord= 77.47; MParentGesture=3.05; MParentWord=190.01). When they were used, iconic number gestures most often accompany a number word, labeled cardinal sets rather than counted items, referred to magnitudes of 1 and 2, and referred to non-visible entities. Importantly, while iconic number gestures are more often used to refer to non-visible entities, number words (without gestures) are more often used to refer to visible entities [Figure 1]. This indicates that both parents and children selectively employ gestures as stand-ins when physical objects cannot be used. We also examine whether parents’ and children’s use of these gestures were related, and whether usage of these gestures was related to children’s later cardinal number knowledge. While parents’ and children’s iconic gesture use was related, we found no evidence that parents’ number gesture use impacted children’s later number word production nor their cardinal number knowledge at 46-months-of-age.

Study 2 proposes that one mechanism by which parents’ iconic number gestures facilitate children’s cardinal number knowledge is by focusing children’s attention on numerical information. Using the same longitudinal sample as Study 1, we examined how children immediately responded to their parents’ use of iconic number gestures and number words alone (without gestures). Children who viewed an iconic number gesture provided more numerically relevant responses than children who heard a number word alone (z(34) = -7.18, p < 0.001) [Figure 2]. Moreover, children whose parents never used iconic number gestures provided fewer numerically relevant responses to number words alone than children whose parents did use iconic number gestures (Z=-3.378 p< 0.01) [Figure 2]. These findings suggest iconic number gestures draw children’s attention to numerical information as something worth commenting upon. Together the studies lend support to the theory that iconic number gestures help children map symbolic number words to quantities.

Authors

• Madeleine Oswald, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Susan Cohen Levine, University of Chicago