CHILDRENS INTEGRATION OF SPEECH AND POINTING GESTURES IN COMPREHENSION

We examined 4- and 9-year-old's referential comprehension when given p ointing gestures and spoken labels, in two types of contextually ambig uous situations. In one situation, speech/gesture discordance was prod uced in conditions where labels for one of four objects being referred to sounded either alike, or different from each other. In the other, the contextual set contained the same two objects, and ambiguity was p roduced by factorially combining speech on a continuum ranging between (sic) and sic with a pointing gesture from a continuum ranging betwee n an unambiguous point to a ball and to a doll. Results showed that th e speech modality had a far greater influence on word comprehension th an gestures. Second, the influence of gestures was greater for the old er children. Mathematical models of speech-gesture understanding were tested against the data. Selection models assume that one dimension of information is used on a given trial, and that the selection of a mod ality depends on the ambiguity of information encoded on the dominant dimension. The Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception (FLMP) assumes that b oth modalities are evaluated independently of one another and then int egrated to achieve comprehension. The results from both age groups wer e best described by the assumptions of the FLMP. Results are related t o general claims about perceptual development during childhood concern ing the quality of representations formed and dimensional selectivity of visual-spoken language. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.