A Helping Hand: Does Gesture Act as a Compensatory Communication Tool During Storytelling in Preschoolers With and Without a History of Late Talking?

Purpose: Children with a history of late talking continue to score on the low-average end of the language endowment spectrum as they grow up. Most research on Late Talker outcomes focuses on spoken language, raising questions about the role of nonverbal communication in children with a history of late talking. The current study extends work on Late Talker outcomes by examining gesture use in children with and without a history of late talking.Method: Preschool aged children with a history of late talking (hLT, n = 16) and with a history of typical talking (hTT, n = 23) told four stories based on wordless cartoons. We examined their gesture use by coding gesture frequency, types (deictic vs. representational), and the informational relationship between spoken language and gesture (redundant vs. non-redundant). We hypothesized that hLTs would recruit gesture as a communication tool during storytelling to supplement their spoken language skills, and thus use more gestures and specifically more representational and non-redundant gestures.Results: Both groups used gestures during the storytelling task. However, we did not find significant differences between hLTs and hTTs on measures of gesture frequency, type, or informational relation to spoken language. Conclusion: Gesture appears to be a ubiquitous communication tool used alongside spoken language for preschoolers with and without a history of late talking. Our findings suggest that a history of late talking does not reliably predict gesture use at 4 years of age.Keywords: gesture, nonverbal communication, history of late talking, language delay, communication outcomes, preschool.