Gesture Development

Question 1

Gesture types

Answer 1

Deictic, representational, emblems and beat

Question 2

Deictic gestures

Answer 2

10 - 12 months
showing, pointing, giving and ritual request;
make reference to something in the environment and rely on context to convey meaning

Question 3

Representational gestures

Answer 3

12- 16 months
baby signs, iconic gestures;
convey some aspect of the reference meaning or function and are produced without the referent in sight

Question 4

Emblem gestures

Answer 4

24 -27 months
high-5s, OKs, thumbs up, hand across throat;
conventional, language-like or abstract symbols to convey camaraderie that do not change referent

Question 5

Beat gestures

Answer 5

talking with hands; follow the ryhthm of speech and provide emphasis on a partiuclar idea but doesn’t convey syntactic information; emerges when the child advances towards morphological and syntactic domain of language

Question 6

Relationship between gestures and mental representation

Answer 6

gestures reflect the content and stability or richness of mental representation

Question 7

Function of gesturing

Answer 7

externalizes mental representation; serves as gesture modeling during the language intervention process; represent knowledge visually without the demand of formulating a verbal description