Abstract
Two alternative accounts have been proposed to explain the role of
gestures in thinking and speaking. The Information Packaging Hypothesis
(Kita, 2000) claims that gestures are important for the conceptual
packaging of information before it is coded into a linguistic form
for speech. The Lexical Retrieval Hypothesis (Rauscher, Krauss &
Chen, 1996) sees gestures as functioning more at the level of speech
production in helping the speaker to find the right words. The latter
hypothesis has not been fully explored with children. In this study
children were given a naming task under conditions that allowed and
restricted gestures. Children named more words correctly and resolved
more 'tip-of-the-tongue' states when allowed to gesture than when
not, suggesting that gestures facilitate access to the lexicon in
children and are important for speech production as well as conceptualization.
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