ERIC Number: EJ1210866
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-May
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
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Available Date: N/A
Learning Speech-Internal Cues to Pronoun Interpretation from Co-Speech Gesture: A Training Study
Goodrich Smith, Whitney; Black, Alexis K.; Hudson Kam, Carla L.
Journal of Child Language, v46 n3 p433-458 May 2019
This study explores whether children can learn a structural processing bias relevant to pronoun interpretation from brief training. Over three days, 42 five-year-olds were exposed to narratives exhibiting a first-mentioned tendency. Two characters were introduced, and the first-mentioned was later described engaging in a solo activity. In our primary condition of interest, the Gesture Training condition, the solo-activity sentence contained an ambiguous pronoun, but co-speech gesture clarified the referent. There were two comparison conditions. In the Gender Training condition the characters were different genders, thereby avoiding ambiguity. In the Name Training condition, the first-mentioned name was simply repeated. Ambiguous pronoun interpretation was tested pre- and post-training. Children in the Gesture condition were significantly more likely to interpret ambiguous pronouns as the first-mentioned character after training. Results from the comparison conditions were ambiguous: there was a small but non-significant effect of training, but also no significant differences between conditions.
Descriptors: Young Children, Child Language, Training, Form Classes (Languages), Nonverbal Communication, Gender Differences, Naming, Cognitive Processes, Program Effectiveness
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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