Poster #46 - Bilingual Children’s use of Gesture with Speech and its Relation to Later Syntax Skills

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Introduction. Before producing words, children use their hands to communicate (i.e., gesture; Nicoladis, 2007). At the one-word stage, children can express a two-word idea by using gesture and speech together (i.e., gesture-plus-speech). Gesture thus expands children’s communicative range (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005) or compensates for weak language skills (Hostetter & Alibali, 2007). For English monolinguals, gesture-plus-speech use at the one-word stage (~18-months-of-age) positively predicts later grammatical skills (42-months-of-age: Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009; Bruner, 1975). Given the dearth of studies investigating bilingual children’s multi-modal language development (see Limia et al., 2019; Germain et al., 2021), it remains unknown whether their use of gesture-plus-speech predicts their syntactic skills across both languages. Thus, we ask whether and how bilingual children’s use of gesture-plus-speech at 18-months-of-age is associated with their syntactic skills at 36-months-of-age in both languages.
Study Population. Participants (n = 38; F = 22; M = 16) were part of a larger sample of ~50 Latino children in an on-going study of bilingual development. All children were exposed to Spanish and English by their first birthday. Caregivers reported exposing children to more Spanish than English (M = 3.90; SD = .92; see scale). Data were collected when children were 18- (M = 18.68 months; SD = 1.12) and 36- (M = 36.90 months; SD = 0.66) months-of-age.
Method. 75-minute video-recorded home observations were conducted at child-age 18-months. Videos were coded for gesture-plus-speech combinations expressing two-word ideas (different meanings: point to cup and say “mama”; Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009). Gestures were defined as communicative hand movements (Özçaliskan & Goldin-Meadow, 2009). Speech was defined as words, protowords, and onomatopoeias used in an appropriate context (Huttenlocher et al, 1991; Pan et al., 2005). Videos were transcribed. CLAN (MacWhinney, 2018) calculated Mean Length of Utterances in words (MLUw). Caregivers self-reported children’s language input from “Only Spanish” (5) to “Equal Amounts of Spanish-English” (3) to “Only English” (1). At child-age 36-months, researchers administered the English and Spanish “sentence structure” subsets from the CELF (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals; Wiig et al., 1992). Children pointed to images (out of 4) that corresponded to sentences. Raw scores were the number correct out of 22 (English) and 18 (Spanish).
Results. Table 1 shows that children used more gesture-plus-speech combinations and scored higher on the CELF in Spanish (i.e., stronger language) than English (p’s > 0.05). Multiple regression analyses (Table 2) indicated that the number of gestures-plus-English-speech was positively associated with children’s English CELF scores (p < 0.05), even after controlling for MLUw and language input. The number of gestures-plus-Spanish-speech was not related to Spanish CELF scores (p > 0.05), though input (i.e., more Spanish) was a positive predictor. Results indicate that children’s early use of both gesture and English speech to convey complex ideas at the one-word stage may predict their later English syntactic skills. This is on a similar timeline as monolinguals (~3 years old). However, this use of gesture with speech may only play a role in advancing bilingual children’s weaker, but not stronger language (i.e., Spanish).

Authors

• Carla Jauregui

• Perla Blanca Gamez, Loyola University Chicago

• Ece Demir-Lira, University of Iowa

• Jordan Sierra Perry, Loyola University Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Natalie Kuchler, Loyola University Chicago

• Maily Galindo, Loyola University Chicago

• Eileen Dominguez, Loyola University Chicago