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Learning speech-internal cues to pronoun interpretation from co-speech gesture: a training study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2019

Whitney GOODRICH SMITH ,
Alexis K. BLACK  and
Carla L. HUDSON KAM
Whitney GOODRICH SMITH
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Canada
Alexis K. BLACK
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Canada
Carla L. HUDSON KAM*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Canada
*
*Corresponding author: 2613 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z4. E-mail: Carla.HudsonKam@ubc.ca
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Abstract

This study explores whether children can learn a structural processing bias relevant to pronoun interpretation from brief training. Over three days, 42 five-year-olds were exposed to narratives exhibiting a first-mentioned tendency. Two characters were introduced, and the first-mentioned was later described engaging in a solo activity. In our primary condition of interest, the Gesture Training condition, the solo-activity sentence contained an ambiguous pronoun, but co-speech gesture clarified the referent. There were two comparison conditions. In the Gender Training condition the characters were different genders, thereby avoiding ambiguity. In the Name Training condition, the first-mentioned name was simply repeated. Ambiguous pronoun interpretation was tested pre- and post-training. Children in the Gesture condition were significantly more likely to interpret ambiguous pronouns as the first-mentioned character after training. Results from the comparison conditions were ambiguous: there was a small but non-significant effect of training, but also no significant differences between conditions.

Keywords

pronoun interpretationprocessing biasestraininggesture
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , May 2019 , pp. 433 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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