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Abstract:
This study longitudinally investigated developmental changes in the frame of
reference used by children in their gestures and speech. Fifteen children,
between 4 and 6 years of age, were asked once a year to describe their route
home from their nursery school. When the children were 4 years old, they
tended to produce gestures that directly and continuously indicated their actual
route in a large gesture space. In contrast, as 6-year-olds, their gestures were
segmented and did not match the actual route. Instead, at age 6, the children
seemed to create a virtual space in front of themselves to symbolically describe
their route. These results indicate that the use of frames of reference develops
across the preschool years, shifting from an actual environmental to an abstract
environmental frame of reference. Factors underlying the development of frame
of reference, including verbal encoding skills and experience, are discussed.
