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Scrutinizing reference: how gesture and speech are coordinated in mother-child interaction*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Chris L. Schmidt
Chris L. Schmidt*
Affiliation:
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
*
Address for correspondence: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Kennedy Center Rm. 222, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, New York 10461, USA.
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Abstract

Maternal estensive naming was investigated in a cross-sectional study of 12 children aged 0;10, 1;3 and 1;6, and a follow-up study of four children aged 1;3. Display, demonstration and pointing were coded with regard to whether and how co-occurring speech referred to gesture focus. Multivariate log-linear frequency analyses found that mothers' coordination of speech with gesture varied with age and the gesture used. Maternal naming of objects was most frequent with children aged 0; 10. Maternal gesture-speech coordination with children aged 1;3 and 1;6 differed in two related ways: (1) actions were named more frequently than objects; and (2) mothers often combined gesture with complementary speech referring, not to gesture focus, but to an action to be performed with the object indicated. At all ages, pointing was rarely used to name ostensively, and occurred most often in combination with complementary reference. Maternal input was found to be significantly correlated with children's reported receptive vocabulary.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 279 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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Footnotes

[*]

My thanks to the families who participated in this project, especially to ‘Lily’ and her mom. I am grateful to Wendy Reddock and Elena Levy for help in coding. Thanks are also due to Katharine Lawson, Elise Masur, Susan Rose, Holly Ruff, Thomas Wickens, my colleagues at the Kennedy Center, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments. Finally, I am grateful to David McNeill and Martin Simone for their advice and encouragement. Portions of this paper were presented at the 1995 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. This research was supported by NICHD Grant 5T32HD0738404.

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