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Major
Neuroscience
Anticipated Graduation Year
2020
Access Type
Restricted Access
Abstract
Gestures, hand movements that can accompany speech and represent actions and ideas, and actions, hand movements that manipulate objects, aid children in learning novel verbs. Interestingly, children who learn verbs through gesture better generalize novel verbs to other contexts than those who learn through action (Wakefield et al., 2018). However, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon remain unknown. The present study combines eye-tracking and behavioral measures to (1) determine whether action and gesture differentially guide children’s visual attention during the verb-learning process and (2) assess whether differences in patterns of visual attention predict behavioral performance.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Elizabeth Wakefield, Ph.D., Psychology; Katharine Guarino, M.A., Psychology; Anne Sutter, Ph.D., Psychology
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
How Action and Gesture Guide Children's Visual Attention During Verb Learning
Gestures, hand movements that can accompany speech and represent actions and ideas, and actions, hand movements that manipulate objects, aid children in learning novel verbs. Interestingly, children who learn verbs through gesture better generalize novel verbs to other contexts than those who learn through action (Wakefield et al., 2018). However, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon remain unknown. The present study combines eye-tracking and behavioral measures to (1) determine whether action and gesture differentially guide children’s visual attention during the verb-learning process and (2) assess whether differences in patterns of visual attention predict behavioral performance.