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Sign advantage: Both children and adults’ spatial expressions in sign are more informative than those in speech and gestures combined

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Karadöller,  Dilay Z.
International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Multimodal Language Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Center for Language Studies, External Organizations;

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Sumer,  Beyza
Multimodal Language Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
University of Amsterdam;

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Özyürek,  Asli
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, External Organizations;
Multimodal Language Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Center for Language Studies, External Organizations;

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Citation

Karadöller, D. Z., Sumer, B., Ünal, E., & Özyürek, A. (2022). Sign advantage: Both children and adults’ spatial expressions in sign are more informative than those in speech and gestures combined. Journal of Child Language. Advance online publication. doi:10.1017/S0305000922000642.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000B-54CC-1
Abstract
Expressing Left-Right relations is challenging for speaking-children. Yet, this challenge was absent for signing-children, possibly due to iconicity in the visual-spatial modality of expression. We investigate whether there is also a modality advantage when speaking-children’s co-speech gestures are considered. Eight-year-old child and adult hearing monolingual Turkish speakers and deaf signers of Turkish-Sign-Language described pictures of objects in various spatial relations. Descriptions were coded for informativeness in speech, sign, and speech-gesture combinations for encoding Left-Right relations. The use of co-speech gestures increased the informativeness of speakers’ spatial expressions compared to speech-only. This pattern was more prominent for children than adults. However, signing-adults and children were more informative than child and adult speakers even when co-speech gestures were considered. Thus, both speaking- and signing-children benefit from iconic expressions in visual modality. Finally, in each modality, children were less informative than adults, pointing to the challenge of this spatial domain in development.