Resultados del diagnóstico

Iconic gestures that depict actions may help children to extract the invariance of action between exemplars of the same action. Kita et al. (2017) suggest that iconic gestures schematize a subset of information that is potentially relevant to the task at hand (see also Chu & Kita, 2008; de Ruiter, 2000; Goldin-Meadow, 2015; Novack & Goldin-Meadow, 2016; Novack et al., 2014). Schematization by gesture is a form of abstraction–in the case of verb learning, iconic gestures that depict actions strip action events from components that are irrelevant to verb meaning (e.g., actors), while maintaining the components that are relevant to verb meaning (e.g., manners of motion). Schematic representations of action events depicted in iconic gestures

can thus help children to individuate actions. Such schematized information is

“light-weight” and efficient for memory (Kita et al., 2017). Indeed, seeing iconic gestures promotes children’s memory of action events (e.g., Aussems & Kita, in press) and route directions (e.g., Austin & Sweller, 2017). Schematic representations of actions depicted in iconic gestures can thus help children to recognize actions in future exemplars of the same actions they may encounter. To summarize, iconic gestures help children to individuate actions in a schematic manner, and children may thus recognize these actions in exemplars of the same action and this helps them to form action concepts, which facilitates subsequent learning of linguistic labels for these actions.

5.2

The Current Research

The current study investigates if pre-exposure to unlabeled actions promotes subse- quent verb learning and if seeing iconic gestures with the unlabeled actions influences this process. In Experiment 6, we manipulated pre-exposure to actions and the ges- ture type that children saw with these exposures. We presented children with a novel

verb learning task that had three phases. In theinitial phase of the task, children

were exposed to unlabeled action exemplars which they either saw with iconic ges- tures that highlighted the actions in the exemplars or interactive gestures (Bavelas

phase, children were either taught verbs with exemplars that showed novel actors performing the actions they were pre-exposed to in the initial phase (retrospective exemplar condition) or with exemplars that showed novel actors performing novel actions that were not pre-exposed to in the initial phase (irrelevant exemplar condi-

tion). In the followingtest phase, children’s knowledge of the novel verb meanings

was tested in a two-way forced choice generalization task. The choice was between an exemplar of a novel actor performing the referent action and an exemplar of the same actor as in the label phase performing a novel action.

We have three predictions. First, children who see retrospective exemplars with interactive gestures will be more successful in the verb generalization task than children who see irrelevant exemplars with interactive gestures. This is be- cause children’s have a better chance of forming an action concept (i.e., extracting the invariance of action) when they see two exemplars of the same action (i.e., two different actors performing the same action) than children who see two exemplars of different actions (i.e., two different actors performing different actions). Second, children who see retrospective exemplars with iconic gestures will be more successful in the verb generalization task than children who see retrospective exemplars with interactive gestures. This is because iconic gestures depict how the actors move, which helps children to individuate actions and extract the invariance of action be- tween two different exemplars. Third, children who see retrospective exemplars with iconic gestures will be more successful in the verb generalization task than children who see irrelevant exemplars with iconic gestures. This outcome would support the idea that iconic gestures schematize a subset of information relevant to the task at hand, and importantly, do not benefit verb learning through teaching children a general strategy (i.e., the task is about looking at actions). Any advantage of the retrospective exemplar conditions over the irrelevant exemplar conditions would support the idea that prior non-linguistic action knowledge promotes subsequent verb learning.

Experiment 7 examined whether seeing retrospective exemplars with iconic gestures facilitates subsequent verb learning because gestures schematize a subset of information relevant to the task at hand, or because iconic gestures function as extra retrospective exemplars. We manipulated the type of pre-exposure to actions. We showed a new group of children retrospective exemplars with iconic gestures

to replicate Experiment 6. A second group of children were taught verbs after

seeing two retrospective exemplars (i.e., two different actors performing the same action), which were presented side by side without gesture. We predict that children who see retrospective exemplars with iconic gestures will generalize verbs to novel

events showing the referent actions more successfully than children who see two different retrospective exemplars. This outcome would support the idea that iconic gestures help children to form action concepts based on schematic information, and importantly, that they go beyond serving as extra retrospective exemplars (i.e., extra opportunity to extract the invariance of action).