Hand Stereotypes

Adults tend to make gestures when they communicate whether intentional or not. It generally helps the speaker express their thoughts, and research shows it makes the listener comprehend the information more extensively. Since gesture and speech are so closely correlated, they are often thought of as a single unified system. Hand gestures are generally used universally but vary throughout different parts of the world. For example, a V sign with fingers may indicate peace in some areas of the world but war in others. A study was conducted to observe young children in order to determine if they can create iconic gestures from their head or if they just mimic what they have witnessed adults doing. According to authors, there has been no known research that has investigated what specific age that young children can create these iconic gestures. Infants tend to begin gesturing a few months before they begin speaking. Once they begin speaking, they generally combine their words with these gestures. It has been noticed that children between the age of ten and twenty-four months produce two different types of gestures. The first being deictic gestures and the second is non-deictic. Deictic gestures include pointing, whereas non-deictic includes shaking the head. This may also …show more content…
For each condition, the coding was performed by a research assistant that did not know the hypotheses, was not present during the tests, and was told to only judge the children on the coding criteria. To assure there was interrater reliability, another coder coded as well. There were four categories amongst the coding that showed the child’s responses. These are shown and described in Table 1 (2053). Children produced more pointing gestures and more iconic gestures in the communication condition than in the control condition. Study one has shown that with the right assets, two year olds are able to use and create random, nonconventional