A Comparison between Children's and Adults' Ability to Detect Conceptual Information Conveyed through Representational Gestures

The present study compares children's and adults' ability to detect information that is conveyed through representational hand gestures. Eighteen children (M = 10 years, 1 month) and 18 college undergraduates watched videotaped stimuli of children verbally and gesturally explaining their reasoning in a problem-solving situation. A recall procedure was used to assess whether children and adults could detect information conveyed in the stimulus children's gesture and speech. Results showed that children and adults recalled information that was conveyed through representational gestures. In addition, "mismatching" gesture negatively affected the precision of speech recall for adults. However, this negative effect on speech recall was absent for children.