This finding provides the first neural evidence that by the ages of 6 or 7, children integrate multimodal semantic information in an online fashion comparable to that of adults. The ERPs showed that the amplitude of the N400 was larger in the mismatching condition than in the matching condition. Children watched video clips of matching or mismatching gesture-speech combinations, which varied the semantic integration load. We focused on the N400 event-related potential component which is modulated by semantic integration load. Using electrophysiological measures, we examined the online neurocognitive processing of gesture- speech integration in 6- to 7-year-old children. Yet it is not known whether children can integrate both types of information simultaneously as soon as they are available (as adults do) or whether they initially process them separately and integrate them later. Previous studies have shown that children integrate information from both modalities.
We concluded that development of the integration ability is a part of the broader developmental shift however, live-presentation facilitates the nascent integration ability in 3-year-olds.Ĭopyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.Ĭhildren perceive iconic gestures, along with speech they hear. When presented live, 3-year-olds could integrate speech and gesture. In Experiment 2, 3-year-old children were presented with the same speech and gesture as in Experiment 1 that were produced live by an experimenter.
The 3-year-olds did not integrate information in speech and gesture, but 5-year-olds and adults did. In Experiment 1, 3-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and adults were presented with either an iconic gesture or a spoken sentence or a combination of the two on a computer screen, and they were instructed to select a photograph that best matched the message. We examined whether children's ability to integrate speech and gesture follows the pattern of a broader developmental shift between 3- and 5-year-old children (Ramscar & Gitcho, 2007) regarding the ability to process two pieces of information simultaneously.
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