Sign advantage: Both children and adults’ spatial expressions in sign are more informative than those in speech and gestures combined

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Karadöller Astarlioğlu D. Z.

JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE, cilt.2023, sa.1, ss.1-27, 2022 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 2023 Sayı: 1
  • Basım Tarihi: 2022
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1017/s0305000922000642
  • Dergi Adı: JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, IBZ Online, PASCAL, Periodicals Index Online, Child Development & Adolescent Studies, CINAHL, Communication & Mass Media Index, Communication Abstracts, EBSCO Education Source, Education Abstracts, Educational research abstracts (ERA), EMBASE, ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Linguistic Bibliography, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MEDLINE, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Psycinfo
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-27
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Expressing Left-Right relations is challenging for speaking-children. Yet, this challenge was absent for signing-children, possibly due to iconicity in the visual-spatial modality of expression. We investigate whether there is also a modality advantage when speaking-children's co-speech gestures are considered. Eight-year-old child and adult hearing monolingual Turkish speakers and deaf signers of Turkish-Sign-Language described pictures of objects in various spatial relations. Descriptions were coded for informativeness in speech, sign, and speech-gesture combinations for encoding Left-Right relations. The use of co-speech gestures increased the informativeness of speakers' spatial expressions compared to speech-only. This pattern was more prominent for children than adults. However, signing-adults and children were more informative than child and adult speakers even when co-speech gestures were considered. Thus, both speaking- and signing-children benefit from iconic expressions in visual modality. Finally, in each modality, children were less informative than adults, pointing to the challenge of this spatial domain in development.