This study explores the role that gesture plays in the earliest stages of language learning.
We describe how one-word speakers use gesture in combination with speech in their …

Two experiments investigated gesture as a form of external support for spoken language
comprehension. In both experiments, children selected blocks according to a set of …

Children, even at the one-word stage of language development, spontaneously produce
gestures along with their speech, just as adults do. Although there appears to be a brief …

Children understand gesture+ speech combinations in which a deictic gesture adds new
information to the accompanying speech by age 1; 6 (Morford & Goldin-Meadow …

In development, children often use gesture to communicate before they use words. The
question is whether these gestures merely precede language development or are …

To gain a full understanding of the steps children follow in acquiring language, researchers
must pay attention to their hands as well as their mouths–that is, to gesture. We first define …

Children produce their first gestures before their first words, and their first gesture+ word
sentences before their first word+ word sentences. These gestural accomplishments have …

There is a growing awareness that language and gesture are deeply intertwined in the
spontaneous expression of adults. Although some research suggests that children use …

The gesture systems developed by 10 deaf children, each incapable of acquiring a
conventional spoken language naturally and not exposed to a conventional manual …

This chapter traces the burgeoning field of developmental gesture studies and examines the
emergence of gestures as visible utterances, adult responses to children's gestures, and the …