Learning as grounded:How children's gestures and speech are coupled to task properties

When children communicate, they use both their hands for gesturing and speech for pronouncing words. Previous research has shown that, when children are on the verge of learning something new, these new insights can be found in the gestures of children while they do not speak about them yet. This current study investigates if this assymetry between gestures and speech during learning can be related to differential coupling between environmental properties and either gestures or speech. In an experiment, children were asked to predict and explain about a balance scale task, whereby task properties with regard to length of the balance scale, mass of the weights, and order of the trials, were systematically varied. The task performance was recorded on video and children’s actions, gestures and speech were coded. Analyses will focus on signatures of (in)stability in the timing and content of children’s gestures and speech as they work with the task