Observing storytellers who use rhythmic beat gestures improves children’s narrative discourse performance

Abstract

Iconic and pointing gestures are important precursors of children’s early language and cognitive development. While beat gestures seem to have positive effects on the recall of information by preschoolers, little is known about the potential beneficial effects of observing beat gestures on the development of children’s narrative performance. We tested forty-four 5- and 6-year-old children in a between-subject study with a pretest–posttest design. Following a pretest in which they were asked to retell the story of an animated cartoon they had watched, the children were exposed to a training session in which they observed an adult telling a total of six one-minute stories under two between-subject experimental conditions: 1) a no-beat condition, where focal elements in the narratives were not highlighted by means of beat gestures; and 2) a beat condition, in which focal elements were highlighted by beat gestures. Following the training session, a posttest was administered following the same procedure as the pretest. Narrative structure scores were independently coded from recordings of the pretest and posttest and subjected to statistical comparisons. The results revealed that children who were exposed to the beat condition showed a higher gain in narrative structure scores. This study thus shows for the first time that a brief training session with beat gestures has immediate benefits for children’s narrative discourse performance.