Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech

Autor: Hélène Lœvenbruck, Mariapaola D'Imperio, Marion Dohen, Núria Esteve-Gibert
Přispěvatelé: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. eHealth Center, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya [Barcelona] (UOC), Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (LPNC ), Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry])-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), GIPSA - Perception, Contrôle, Multimodalité et Dynamiques de la parole (GIPSA-PCMD), GIPSA Pôle Parole et Cognition (GIPSA-PPC), Grenoble Images Parole Signal Automatique (GIPSA-lab), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP ), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP ), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Grenoble Images Parole Signal Automatique (GIPSA-lab), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), Department of Linguistics and the Center for Cognitive ScienceRutgers University. (RuCCS), Rutgers University [Camden], Rutgers University System (Rutgers)-Rutgers University System (Rutgers)
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Developmental Science
Developmental Science, 2022, 25 (1), pp.e13154. ⟨10.1111/desc.13154⟩
Developmental Science, Wiley, 2022, 25 (1), pp.e13154. ⟨10.1111/desc.13154⟩
Developmental Science, Wiley, 2021, ⟨10.1111/desc.13154⟩
ISSN: 1363-755X
1467-7687
DOI: 10.1111/desc.13154⟩
Popis: International audience; Previous evidence suggests that children's mastery of prosodic modulations to signal the informational status of discourse referents emerges quite late in development. In the present study, we investigate the children's use of head gestures as it compares to prosodic cues to signal a referent as being contrastive relative to a set of possible alternatives. A group of French-speaking pre-schoolers were audio-visually recorded while playing in a semi-spontaneous but controlled production task, to elicit target words in the context of broad focus, contrastive focus, or corrective focus utterances. We analysed the acoustic features of the target words (syllable duration and word-level pitch range), as well as the head gesture features accompanying these target words (head gesture type, alignment patterns with speech). We found that children's production of head gestures, but not their use of either syllable duration or word-level pitch range, was affected by focus condition. Children mostly aligned head gestures with relevant speech units, especially when the target word was in phrase-final position. Moreover, the presence of a head gesture was linked to greater syllable duration patterns in all focus conditions. Our results show that (a) 4- and 5-year-old French-speaking children use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to mark the informational status of discourse referents, (b) the use of head gestures may gradually entrain the production of adult-like prosodic features, and that (c) head gestures with no referential relation with speech may serve a linguistic structuring function in communication, at least during language development.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz: