Simultaneous gesture and language production in school age children with perinatal stroke

OF THE THESIS Simultaneous Gesture and Language Production in School Age Children with Perinatal Stroke by Angel Hoi Man Li Master of Arts in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences with a Concentration in Speech Language Pathology San Diego State University, 2011 In naturalistic settings, children and adults complement speech with gestures when engaging in conversations. McNeill hypothesized that language and gesture form an integrated system. Developmental research in preschool and younger children has supported this hypothesis, as gestures play a predictive role in later language development. During early language development, deictic (i.e., pointing) gestures are frequent and have a primary role in communication. Children undergo rapid morpho-syntactic and lexical development, and with the ability to produce multi-word utterances, come a preference for verbal utterances over gesture as the primary communicative channel. However, during the school age period, the role of gestures remains largely unknown, and we know little about the transition from the use of pointing in infants to adult gesture use. Children with Perinatal Stroke (PS) provide an opportunity to chronicle gestural growth, and the early neural damage allows us to evaluate assumptions regarding neural plasticity: that the developing brain will develop alternative pathways and thus children are less likely to be affected from an early insult than adults with comparable lesions. With respect to language, adults with right hemisphere injury (RHI) are characterized by cognitive and pragmatic impairments that are different from language impairments, or aphasias, as seen in adults with left hemisphere injury (LHI). However, studies of early language development literature in children with PS has found expressive language delays in children with either RHI or LHI, whereas receptive language is relatively spared in those with LHI. By school age, lesion site differences in the children with PS resolve and these children’s spontaneous language ability is roughly comparable to their typically-developing (TD) peers. However, there is scant research in school age TD children and none in children with PS regarding gestural development, nor is there research regarding the relation between language and gesture in spontaneous social discourse in these groups. Thus, the present study will address (1) gesture–speech development in school age TD children and (2) their brain-bases by examining speech and gesture in children with unilateral PS. To address these issues, we explored three research questions to study gesture and language production in school age TD children and those with unilateral PS in a semi-structured biographical interview, in which language samples and gestures are recorded. Data at two time points are collected for each participant. Data at time point 1 were collected between ages five and six and data at time point 2 were collected between ages seven through nine. Findings from gestural and language measures will address McNeill’s language-gesture integration hypothesis and the nature and extent neural plasticity for gesture.