What do iconic gestures and practical actions communicate to children?

Join Suzanne Aussems - Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Warwick - for her seminar which is both in-person and online.

About the seminar

People naturally gesture as they speak, often depicting actions, motions, or shapes to illustrate what is said. These iconic gestures are hand movements that resemble features of spoken referents, which may play a key role in children’s learning.  Drawing on experimental evidence, I will show that iconic gestures can guide children’s attention, highlight the action referents of verbs, and support their event memory and word learning. I will also discuss parallels with practical action demonstrations, revealing how both gestures and actions provide learning benefits for infants and young children.

The talk will last about 45 minutes, followed by 15 minutes for questions from the audience. You can join the seminar online via Teams.