Explored how hand gestures help interlocutors coordinate their dialogue. Analysis of dyadic conversations and monologues revealed that requirements of dialogue uniquely affect interactive gestures. Gestures aided the speaker's efforts to include the addressee in the conversation. Gestures also demonstrated the importance of social processes in…

Nonverbal communication is a legitimate concern of English-as-a-Second-Language teachers. Some practical issues regarding communicative language teaching are addressed, followed by a discussion of classroom techniques, whole-group and small-group settings, intervention, and ways to build students' awareness. (Contains 18 references.) (LB)

A case study of a 38-year-old "feral child" was conducted to learn more about the speech and language development of children who received limited simulation in early development. Language training results indicated an increase in communicative attempts and nonverbal communication acts but limited increases in verbalizations. (Author/CR)

Finds that students enrolled in conventional classrooms and distributed-learning classrooms (in which students primarily interact with the instructor and other students through computer-mediated communication) did not perceive a significant difference in instructor verbal immediacy, but they did perceive a significant difference in instructor…

Finds significant relationships between levels of teaching assistant dress and student cognitive learning, student affective learning, and ratings of instruction. Finds significant negative relationship between casual instructor attire and student likelihood of misbehavior, with misbehaviors less likely for teaching assistants with high…

Reports on a study of how nonverbal cues during supervision affect Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) graduate students' impressions of the trustworthiness of supervisors. Particular features of nonverbal communication during supervision were staged in video materials constructed specifically for the research. Students evaluated the…

Notes that communication between teachers and culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students need serious consideration especially in recognizing potential sources of miscommunication and misinterpretation. Considers sources of miscommunication within verbal and nonverbal communication. Discusses each element and offers examples in CLD…

Affective and Neutral Tasks (faces with negative or neutral content, with different lighting and orientation) requiring reaction time judgments of poser identity were administered to 32 participants. Speed and accuracy were better for the Affective than Neutral Task, consistent with literature suggesting facilitation of performance by affective…

In this article I detail the conceptual trajectory of a classroom of 2nd- and 3rd-grade students as they reinvent topographical lines to represent height in a map within the constraints of an overhead perspective. In my analysis I pay special attention to the role of social interaction--and in particular the role of the teacher--in the process of…

This article takes a microanalytic perspective on the speech and gestures used by one teacher of English as a second language in her intensive English program classroom. Videotaped excerpts from her intermediate-level grammar course were transcribed to represent the speech, gesture, and other nonverbal behavior that accompanied unplanned…

The development of the "inversion" effect in face processing was examined in infants 3 to 6 months of age by testing their integration of the internal and external features of upright and inverted faces using a variation of the "switch" visual habituation paradigm. When combined with previous findings showing that 7-month-olds use integrative…

The ''ba, ba, ba'' sound universal to babies' babbling around 7 months captures scientific attention because it provides insights into the mechanisms underlying language acquisition and vestiges of its evolutionary origins. Yet the prevailing mystery is what is the biological basis of babbling, with one hypothesis being that it is a non-linguistic…

The current study examined whether socioeconomic status (SES) and chaos in the home mediate the shared environmental variance associated with cognitive functioning simultaneously estimating genetic influences in a twin design. Verbal and nonverbal cognitive development were assessed at 3 and 4 years for identical and same-sex fraternal twin pairs…

This study explored infants' ability to infer communicative intent as expressed in non-linguistic gestures. Sixty children aged 14, 18 and 24 months participated. In the context of a hiding game, an adult indicated for the child the location of a hidden toy by giving a communicative cue: either pointing or ostensive gazing toward the container…

The effects of maternal interactive styles on the production of referential communication were assessed in four groups of infants whose chronological ages ranged between 0;6 and 1;8. Two groups of infants with Down syndrome (DS), one (n = 11) with a mean mental age (MA) of 0;8.6, and the other (n = 11) of 1;4.5, were matched on MA with two groups…