Murillo, Galera & Casla: «“Which one is different?” :gestures and speech combination beyond the two-word stage»
Gestures and speech combinations have a crucial role on early lexical and syntactic development. Nonetheless, little is known about the role of these combinations on language learning beyond the two-word stage. The aim of this study is to explore how children combine gestures and speech when they are starting to master the syntactic rules. Thirty Spanish children (aged 24 to 35 months) participated in an experimental task with a “find the odd one” game structure, based on the task used by Vilain, Vilain and Clarke (2013). Children coordinated gestures and words preferably as their main communicative resource, regardless the difficulty of the items or their linguistic development. Among all types of gesture-speech combinations produced by children, reinforcing combinations were the ones related to lexical and syntactic development