Do gestures compensate for language deficiency in interactional discourse?

This study investigated speech obstacles of Taiwanese Mandarin-speaking late talkers at 24 months of age by analyzing their use of gestures independently or alongside speech to resolve communicative challenges, compared to age-matched typically developing children. Spontaneous gesture and speech data were collected during mother–child interactions. Children’s linguistic abilities were also assessed using the Taiwan version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Late talkers showed limited vocabularies, reduced grammatical complexity, and predominantly one-word utterances. However, their gestural abilities were intact, with gesture rates and types comparable to those of their typically developing peers. Late talkers compensated for speech difficulties by relying more on gestures to achieve communicative goals non-verbally or combined with speech. Although they produced fewer cross-modal combinations, these combinations enriched the speech content and allowed communication of more complex ideas about entities and predication. Notably, these cross-modal patterns were not realized entirely in their spoken language, with some patterns lacking verbal equivalents.