The Role of Gestures Contributing to Speech Production in Children

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  • 幼児期における発話産出に寄与する身振りの役割
  • ヨウジキ ニ オケル ハツワ サンシュツ ニ キヨ スル ミブリ ノ ヤクワリ

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Abstract

The present study investigated the function of gestures in the descriptions of events by preschoolers. Specifically, utilizing McNeill's "Growth Point" theory (2005), I examined how these children's gestures contributed to the creation of contrasts in their spoken discourse. When preschool children describe an event consisting of multiple activities (like playing on a slide), they often make unintended erroneous expressions. Frequently, they begin with the central activity of a sequence of events instead of describing it in chronological order. This study indicates that in descriptions of events, gestures provide the speaker cue(s) for forming their next idea or serve as a resource for speech repair. The results suggest that gestures have at least two functions: 1) a visual-feedback function and 2) a contextcreation function, both of which have been largely overlooked so far. These gestural functions are considered to contribute to the process of utterance formation and can provide an index for assessing the ontogenetic development of language construction.

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