Embodying stories

This study examines the multimodal characteristics of child-directed (CDS) and adult-directed (ADS) speech, focusing on speech and gesture behavior, with particular emphasis on gesture referentiality, viewpoint, and informativeness. Forty Early Childhood Education students ( M age = 20.45, 35 female) narrated the same wordless cartoon to simulated adult and child audiences (TEACH-TALK corpus), producing 196.33 minutes of speech and 7,191 gestures. Results showed that the CDS narratives were longer and included more referential iconic gestures. No differences in the overall gesture rate or gesture informativeness were found between conditions. Notably, iconic gestures with character viewpoint exhibited a higher frequency in CDS, indicating that these gestures, in conjunction with speech, may facilitate children’s comprehension by enhancing clarity and expressiveness of the narrative content.