Gesture Reduces Mapping Difficulties in the Development of Spatial Language Depending on the Complexity of Spatial Relations.

ABSTRACT: In spoken languages, children acquire locative terms in a cross-linguistically stable order. Terms similar in meaning to in and on emerge earlier than those similar to front and behind, followed by left and right. This order has been attributed to the complexity of the relations expressed by different locative terms. An additional possibility is that children may be delayed in expressing certain spatial meanings partly due to difficulties in discovering the mappings between locative terms in speech and spatial relation they express. We investigate cognitive and mapping difficulties in the domain of spatial language by comparing how children map spatial meanings onto speech versus visually motivated forms in co-speech gesture across different spatial relations. Twenty-four 8-year-old and 23

SUBMITTER: Unal E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11849910 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature