Caregivers' Gestures Direct Infant Attention during Early Word Learning: The Importance of Dynamic Synchrony

Autor/inn/en	Rader, Nancy de Villiers; Zukow-Goldring, Patricia
Titel	Caregivers' Gestures Direct Infant Attention during Early Word Learning: The Importance of Dynamic Synchrony
Quelle	In: Language Sciences, 34 (2012) 5, S.559-568 (10 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0388-0001
DOI	10.1016/j.langsci.2012.03.011
Schlagwörter	Video Technology; Caregiver Child Relationship; Infants; Nonverbal Communication; Language Acquisition; Auditory Perception; Learning Processes; Control Groups; Role; Vocabulary Development + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Infant; Toddler; Toddlers; Kleinkind; Non-verbal communication; Nonverbale Kommunikation; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Auditive Wahrnehmung; Akustische Wahrnehmung; Akustik; Learning process; Lernprozess; Rollen; Wortschatzarbeit
Abstract	How do young infants discover word meanings? We have theorized that caregivers educate infants' attention (cf. Gibson, J.J., 1966) by synchronizing the saying of a word with a dynamic gesture displaying the object/referent (Zukow-Goldring, 1997). Detecting an amodal invariant across gesture and speech brackets the word and object within the auditory and visual flow of events and constitutes the basis for perceiving them as belonging together (Zukow-Goldring and Rader, 2001; cf. Spence, 2007). To test the effect of gesture on infant attention and word learning, we presented 9-14-month-old infants with videos of speakers using synchronous dynamic, static, or asynchronous dynamic gestures. We hypothesized that infants would attend more to the object at the time the word was spoken when the gesture was dynamic and synchronous with speech and that this synchrony would result in better word learning. We found that infants looked more at the object at the critical time and displayed better word learning in the dynamic synchronous condition compared with the other gesture conditions. These results highlight the key role that synchronizing word and gesture plays in infants' learning of the correspondence between word and referent. (Contains 3 figures.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10