The usefulness of gestures in language development

Researchers at UPF and the UdG find that as we grow older we use more non-referential gestures in our narratives, gestures that do not visually represent what we are saying, and this indicates a greater ability to structure discourse. Gesturing when speaking is something we all do, whether consciously or unconsciously, and is part of human communication. We usually use our hands, move our head, raise our eyebrows, point with our fingers, describe shapes with our hands and arms, and even turn our body. Gestures are many and varied and they play a very important role in learning a language and creating knowledge. Researchers from the Prosodic Studies Group ( GrEP ) at the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University, together with the Department of Subject-Specific Education at the University of Girona, have published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology a study of how children use gestures to mark information structure in narrative discourse. When we speak we make gestures, which can be classified into two major groups. Referential gestures are the ones that visually represent what we are explaining, or the ones that are used to define a key word or concept for the discourse that is being constructed.