Iconic Gesture Use in Preschool Children

Gesturing is a fundamental human behaviour associated with communication, language use and cognition. Hitherto, there has been little research on gesture use in young children, but such evidence is needed at a time when, in the U.K., hand signing with preschool children has become increasingly popular. This study examines the use of spontaneous iconic gesturing in a large sample of young, preschool children (N = 121, mean age = 44.6 months, S.D = 7.8; 59 boys). Overall, we found that gestures are more frequent when children are asked to describe the function of an object when compared with object naming. In addition, girls gesture less frequently than boys when describing unfamiliar objects.