The bearing of a potential general system of nonverbal communication has been suggest at in a new study that explored the age at which children develop the dispute between co - speech gestures ( gesture accompanying speech ) and silent motion ( gesturing without speech ) that adults practice .
The research worker focused on children aged between 3 and 12 class old who either spoke English or Turkish . The children were require to expend their workforce to act out certain actions , like “ run into a house ” .
“ English and Turkish were the primary compare because they differ in term of the way you talk about events , ” Şeyda Özçalışkan , a prof in the Psychology Department at Georgia State University , said in astatement .
“ If you ’re speaking Turkish , if you require to describe someone running into a house , you have to chunk it up . You say , ‘ he ’s running and then he enters the house , ’ ” she said . “ But if it ’s in English , they ’ll just say ‘ he run into the home , ’ all in one thick conviction . As such , it is easier to verbalise both run ( way of motion ) and entering ( path of apparent movement ) together in a single expression in English than in Turkish . ”
fundamentally , Özçalışkan and workfellow wanted to know whether gesture follows these difference and how former tike learn these convention during their development .
The fry were take to describe the same activity two meter . Firstly , when speaking ( speech communication and co - speech gestures ) , and then without speaking and only using their hand ( dumb motion ) .
The researchers happen that , when children verbalize and gestured at the same metre , their gestures followed the convention of their language . This mean there were clear difference between the motion used by English and Turkish loudspeaker – but when they used gestures alone , the children ’s gestures were remarkably similar .
“ It is easier to utter both running and enrol in a undivided motion compare to speech , particularly for Turkish speakers who have to express running and enter in two freestanding sentences in their speech , ” Özçalışkan explain . “ So when you ’re not speaking , gesture does n’t have to follow the detachment of manner and track , and , you’re able to easily actually put them together . ”
Interestingly , the study obtain that these traffic pattern appear at an other eld . youngster pop to use co - speech gestures with their speak language around 3 to 4 class of years .
In a late study , Özçalışkan and colleague examined this phenomenon in sighted and unsighted grownup . In this study , the participants were also divided between English and Turkish loudspeaker system . Using the same methods as in this modish sketch , the squad found the same divergence in co - speech gesture and similarities in still gesture . This was a surprising result , especially as the non - sighted player had been blind from parturition and therefore had never seen anyone gesture before .
So far , the result of these sketch have shown that many participants use gestures like to those in “ home sign organization ” , which are intimate sign language system developed ad libitum by deaf child who have not yet learned conventional sign linguistic communication .
“ What we see in fact , is some of these sorts of introductory structures that we see in , for instance , early signaling languages , ” Özçalışkan tell .
Özçalışkan believes this argue the potential existence of a kind of universal gesture system that enable us to communicate with one another regardless of language , sight , or hearing power .
The next step , Özçalışkan suggests , is to consider unreasoning Turkish and English - speaking tike to see if the same patterns seem there .
“ We established in our earlier work that unsighted adults gesture like sighted adults … They bear witness differences in speech and co - speech gesture , but when they ’re not talking , they show similarities . So , the next question is , how early do we see evidence of that ? ” Özçalışkan say .
The work is published in the journalLanguage and Cognition .
