The impact of balance of multilingual exposure on gesture comprehension in children above preschool age
DOKPE
- Wolfer, Pauline ORCID University of Fribourg
- Baumeister, Franziska ORCID University of Fribourg
- Daum, Moritz M. ORCID University of Zurich
- Dimitrova, Nevena ORCID University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland
- Leone, Giada University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI)
- Naigles, Letitia R. ORCID University of Connecticut
- Solaimani, Ehsan ORCID University of York
- Durrleman, Stephanie ORCID University of Fribourg
- 2025
Published in:
- Applied Psycholinguistics. - Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 2025, vol. 46
English
Previous work had shown that multilingual preschool children are better at interpreting deictic gestures than their monolingual peers. The present study examines whether this multilingual effect persists beyond preschool age and whether it extends to iconic (i.e., representing the referent) and conventional (i.e., holding an arbitrary meaning) gestures. A total of N = 105 children (aged 3 to 8), varying in their balance of exposure to more than one language since birth, completed a gamified gesture comprehension task. The three gesture types were presented in four communicative conditions, namely (1) alone, with (2) reinforcing or (3) supplementing speech, compared to (4) speech produced alone. Analyses revealed that children with greater balance in their multilingual exposure understood significantly more speechless iconic gestures than children with less balanced multilingual exposure. Findings align with previous work and theoretical frameworks, indicating that multilingual exposure enhances children’s sensitivity to nonverbal communicative cues.
- Faculty
- Faculté des sciences et de médecine
- Department
- Département de Médecine
- Language
-
- English
- Classification
- Pathology, clinical medicine
- Other electronic version
- License
-
CC BY
- Open access status
- hybrid
- Identifiers
-
- DOI 10.1017/S0142716425100192
- ISSN 0142-7164
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/333857
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