Olga Capirci

Gestures and words during the transition to two-word speech

This study explores the communicative use of the gestural and vocal modalities by normally developing Italian children during the transition from one- to two-word speech. We analysed the spontaneous production of 12 children at 1;4 and at 1;8, focusing on the use of two-element combinations of words and/or gestures. Results indicated that use of gesture and gesture-word combinations during the transition to two-word speech is a robust feature of communicative development across a relatively large number of children in a rich gestural culture, and that the number of gesture-word and two-word combinations increased significantly from 1;4 to 1;8. Number of gestures and gesture-word combinations produced at 1;4 was also predictive of total vocal production at 1;8. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of gesture as a transitional device en route to two-word speech.

From communication to language in two modalities

This study explores the interplay between gestures and words in the early vocabularies of 12 normally developing Italian children at 16 and 20 months of age. Focusing on spontaneous production of verbal and gestural types and tokens, we assessed the diversity and semantic content of the verbal and gestural vocabularies. Results indicated that the gestural modality was utilized extensively by all subjects. Whereas only half the group had more gesture than word types in their repertoires at 16 months, eight of the 12 subjects exhibited a clear preference for communication in the gestural modality, employing a larger number of gestural than verbal tokens. By 20 months, almost all of the subjects had many more word types and used words more frequently than gestures. By providing some sensorimotor components of an object-referent, gestures may lessen the demand on developing symbolic skills and aid the child in the transition to highly abstract word-referent relationships.

Learning to talk in a gesture-rich world: Early communication in Italian vs. American children

Italian children are immersed in a gesture-rich culture. Given the large gesture repertoire of Italian adults, young Italian children might be expected to develop a larger inventory of gestures than American children. If so, do these gestures impact the course of language learning? We examined gesture and speech production in Italian and US children between the onset of first words and the onset of two-word combinations. We found differences in the size of the gesture repertoires produced by the Italian vs. the American children, differences that were inversely related to the size of the childrens spoken vocabularies. Despite these differences in gesture vocabulary, in both cultures we found that gesture + speech combinations reliably predicted the onset of two-word combinations, underscoring the robustness of gesture as a harbinger of linguistic development.

Language Development in Williams Syndrome A Case Study

The present study focuses on the first stages of linguistic development of an Italian girl with Williams Syndrome WS followed longitudinally through weekly observations from age 2 6 to age 4 10 and systematically tested every two months In all three areas of language considered vocabulary morphology and syntax some similarities but also some interesting differences with respect to normal development were noted In particular the WS child did not seem to master certain aspects of Italian morphology and syntax and her production varied widely depending on context Our data confirm a delayed and partially atypical profile of language development in WS subjects

Early linguistic abilities of Italian children with Williams syndrome.

Previous studies of linguistic and memory abilities in Italian-speaking children with Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS) are briefly reviewed. New data on linguistic performance of 6 Italian children with WS between 3 and 6 years of age are presented and compared with data on linguistic performance of 6 children with DS selected from a larger sample and matched for chronological age and vocabulary size and of 6 typically developing (TD) younger children matched for mental age and vocabulary size. The language measures also included a parent report of early phrase structure, a naming test, and a sentence repetition task. Analyses revealed that the 3 groups of children were at the same productive vocabulary level, but showed different patterns in sentence production and repetition. Children with WS produced more complete sentences, similar to TD children at the same vocabulary size, whereas children with DS produced more telegraphic and incomplete sentences. The difference between children with DS and those with WS was more marked on the repetition task, suggesting that phonological short-term memory may play a greater role when sentence production is measured through repetition. In addition, qualitative analysis of errors produced in the repetition test revealed interesting differences among the 3 groups. These results from younger children confirm and extend previous findings with older children and adolescents with WS. They further suggest that the apparently spared linguistic abilities of children with WS could emerge as an artifact of comparisons made to children with DS, whose sentence production competence is more compromised relative to other verbal and nonverbal abilities.

Lexical production in children with Williams syndrome: spontaneous use of gesture in a naming task.

This study investigates lexical organization and lexical retrieval in children with Williams syndrome (WS), by examining both naming accuracy and accompanying use of gestures in a picture-naming task. Ten children with the genetic disorder of Williams syndrome (age range: 9.5-12.9) were compared with 20 typically developing children, 10 matched for chronological age (CA) and 10 for mental-age (MA). Lexical production was measured by administering the Boston Naming test (BNT). Older typically developing children performed significantly better than the other two groups. No differences in accuracy were found between the children with WS and the typically developing children matched for mental-age. The overall distribution of error types displayed by children with WS indicate that the lexical-semantic organization is similar to that of typically developing children. However, compared to controls, the WS group produced more iconic gestures during the task, in patterns that suggest the existence of specific word-finding difficulties in these children. Results are discussed within the framework of recent theories on the role of gesture in speech production.

What atypical populations can reveal about language development : The contrast between deafness and Williams syndrome

Two distinct lines of investigation are presented: the study of linguistic competence in the written language of deaf children and adults, and the study of linguistic development in children and adolescents with Williams syndrome (WS). Qualitative data focusing on spoken and written Italian and coming from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies conducted over the last 10 years are briefly reviewed and discussed. Italian people who are deaf demonstrate selective difficulties with aspects of grammatical morphology that play a syntactic rather than a semantic function. Italian people with WS display a particular asymmetric fragmentation within linguistic abilities: a profile of strength in phonological abilities but serious deficits in semantic and morphosyntactic aspects of language. The case of these two very different populations can offer us important clues for investigating which aspects of language and specifically of grammar are influenced by modality of perception.

Drawing Abilities in Williams Syndrome: A Case Study

Children with Williams syndrome (WS) have been reported to exhibit an unusual cognitive profile characterized by marked preservation of linguistic abilities and poor visuospatial abilities against a backdrop of generalized mental retardation. Much of the data documenting this profile come from studies of older children and adults with WS. Very few studies have reported findings from the preschool and early school-age period. As a result, little is known about the early development of cognitive processes in children with WS. Capirci, Sabbadini, and Volterra (1996) reported data from a longitudinal case study of early language development in a young child with WS. This article presents the longitudinal profile of visuospatial abilities in this same child. Data on copying and free drawing collected over a period extending from late preschool to early school age are reported. It is clear from these data that this child does indeed exhibit deficits in visuospatial abilities. Her performance clearly improved with age, but deficits persist.

Gestural, signed and spoken modalities in early language development: The role of linguistic input

The aim of the present study was to examine potential effects of early exposure to sign language on the use of communicative gestures by a bilingual hearing child of deaf parents. Data collected monthly during the first two years were analyzed in order to identify types and tokens of communicative gestures, words, and signs and the ways in which they were combined. These data are compared with those obtained from 12 monolingual hearing children observed at 16 and 20 months of age who were exposed only to spoken language. Findings suggest that while exposure to sign language does not seem to provide the bilingual child with an advantage in the rate of early linguistic development, it does appear to influence the extent to which he communicated in the manual modality and made use of its representational and combinatorial potential.

The body and the fading away of abstract concepts and words: a sign language analysis.

One of the most important challenges for embodied and grounded theories of cognition concerns the representation of abstract concepts, such as “freedom.” Many embodied theories of abstract concepts have been proposed. Some proposals stress the similarities between concrete and abstract concepts showing that they are both grounded in perception and action system while other emphasize their difference favoring a multiple representation view. An influential view proposes that abstract concepts are mapped to concrete ones through metaphors. Furthermore, some theories underline the fact that abstract concepts are grounded in specific contents, as situations, introspective states, emotions. These approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive, since it is possible that they can account for different subsets of abstract concepts and words. One novel and fruitful way to understand the way in which abstract concepts are represented is to analyze how sign languages encode concepts into signs. In the present paper we will discuss these theoretical issues mostly relying on examples taken from Italian Sign Language (LIS, Lingua dei Segni Italiana), the visual-gestural language used within the Italian Deaf community. We will verify whether and to what extent LIS signs provide evidence favoring the different theories of abstract concepts. In analyzing signs we will distinguish between direct forms of involvement of the body and forms in which concepts are grounded differently, for example relying on linguistic experience. In dealing with the LIS evidence, we will consider the possibility that different abstract concepts are represented using different levels of embodiment. The collected evidence will help us to discuss whether a unitary embodied theory of abstract concepts is possible or whether the different theoretical proposals can account for different aspects of their representation.