Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech

Previous evidence suggests that children's mastery of prosodic modulations to signal the informational status of discourse referents emerges quite late in development. In the present study, we investigate the children's use of head gestures as it compares to prosodic cues to signal...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Esteve-Gibert, Núria, Loevenbruck, Hélène, Dohen, Marion, D'Imperio, Mariapaola
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Repositorio:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
OAI Identifier:oai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/154523
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10609/154523
https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13154
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:contrastive focus
French
head gestures
information structure
language acquisition
non-referential gestures
prosody development
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spelling Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speechEsteve-Gibert, NúriaLoevenbruck, HélèneDohen, MarionD'Imperio, Mariapaolacontrastive focusFrenchhead gesturesinformation structurelanguage acquisitionnon-referential gesturesprosody developmentPrevious evidence suggests that children's mastery of prosodic modulations to signal the informational status of discourse referents emerges quite late in development. In the present study, we investigate the children's use of head gestures as it compares to prosodic cues to signal a referent as being contrastive relative to a set of possible alternatives. A group of French-speaking pre-schoolers were audio-visually recorded while playing in a semi-spontaneous but controlled production task, to elicit target words in the context of broad focus, contrastive focus, or corrective focus utterances. We analysed the acoustic features of the target words (syllable duration and word-level pitch range), as well as the head gesture features accompanying these target words (head gesture type, alignment patterns with speech). We found that children's production of head gestures, but not their use of either syllable duration or word-level pitch range, was affected by focus condition. Children mostly aligned head gestures with relevant speech units, especially when the target word was in phrase-final position. Moreover, the presence of a head gesture was linked to greater syllable duration patterns in all focus conditions. Our results show that (a) 4- and 5-year-old French-speaking children use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to mark the informational status of discourse referents, (b) the use of head gestures may gradually entrain the production of adult-like prosodic features, and that (c) head gestures with no referential relation with speech may serve a linguistic structuring function in communication, at least during language development.Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd202620262022info:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionapplication/pdfhttps://hdl.handle.net/10609/154523https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13154reponame:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOCinstname:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)InglésDevelopmental Science, 2022, 25(1)Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessoai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/1545232026-05-28T12:42:01Z
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech
title Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech
spellingShingle Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech
Esteve-Gibert, Núria
contrastive focus
French
head gestures
information structure
language acquisition
non-referential gestures
prosody development
title_short Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech
title_full Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech
title_fullStr Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech
title_full_unstemmed Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech
title_sort Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech
dc.creator.none.fl_str_mv Esteve-Gibert, Núria
Loevenbruck, Hélène
Dohen, Marion
D'Imperio, Mariapaola
author Esteve-Gibert, Núria
author_facet Esteve-Gibert, Núria
Loevenbruck, Hélène
Dohen, Marion
D'Imperio, Mariapaola
author_role author
author2 Loevenbruck, Hélène
Dohen, Marion
D'Imperio, Mariapaola
author2_role author
author
author
dc.subject.none.fl_str_mv contrastive focus
French
head gestures
information structure
language acquisition
non-referential gestures
prosody development
topic contrastive focus
French
head gestures
information structure
language acquisition
non-referential gestures
prosody development
description Previous evidence suggests that children's mastery of prosodic modulations to signal the informational status of discourse referents emerges quite late in development. In the present study, we investigate the children's use of head gestures as it compares to prosodic cues to signal a referent as being contrastive relative to a set of possible alternatives. A group of French-speaking pre-schoolers were audio-visually recorded while playing in a semi-spontaneous but controlled production task, to elicit target words in the context of broad focus, contrastive focus, or corrective focus utterances. We analysed the acoustic features of the target words (syllable duration and word-level pitch range), as well as the head gesture features accompanying these target words (head gesture type, alignment patterns with speech). We found that children's production of head gestures, but not their use of either syllable duration or word-level pitch range, was affected by focus condition. Children mostly aligned head gestures with relevant speech units, especially when the target word was in phrase-final position. Moreover, the presence of a head gesture was linked to greater syllable duration patterns in all focus conditions. Our results show that (a) 4- and 5-year-old French-speaking children use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to mark the informational status of discourse referents, (b) the use of head gestures may gradually entrain the production of adult-like prosodic features, and that (c) head gestures with no referential relation with speech may serve a linguistic structuring function in communication, at least during language development.
publishDate 2022
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv 2022
2026
2026
dc.type.none.fl_str_mv info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
format article
status_str publishedVersion
dc.identifier.none.fl_str_mv https://hdl.handle.net/10609/154523
https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13154
url https://hdl.handle.net/10609/154523
https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13154
dc.language.none.fl_str_mv Inglés
language_invalid_str_mv Inglés
dc.relation.none.fl_str_mv Developmental Science, 2022, 25(1)
dc.rights.none.fl_str_mv Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights_invalid_str_mv Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
eu_rights_str_mv openAccess
dc.format.none.fl_str_mv application/pdf
dc.publisher.none.fl_str_mv Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd
publisher.none.fl_str_mv Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd
dc.source.none.fl_str_mv reponame:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
instname:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
instname_str Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
reponame_str O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
collection O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
repository.name.fl_str_mv
repository.mail.fl_str_mv
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score 15,81155

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