Integrating Gesture to the Study of Self-Repairs in Children's Spontaneous Speech

Vollständiger Abstract

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Abstract This study explores the link between repairs and gestures in children's speech. Although (dis)fluency markers (repetitions, filled/silent pauses, repairs) are common in typically developing children's speech ( Lickley, 2017 ), many studies focused on adults’ repairs ( Penttilä et al., 2022 ; Roberts et al., 2009 ) and the use of gesture during (dis)fluent speech ( Graziano & Gullberg, 2018 ; Seyfeddinipur, 2006 ), but we know little about children's multimodal repairs ( Morgenstern et al., 2013 ). In this study, 20 French-speaking 7- to-10-year-old children were video-recorded while spontaneously interacting with one of their parents. Self-repairs and other-repairs (lexical, phonological, morphosyntactic) and gestures (referential, non-referential) were coded based on their type. Gestures synchronized with the repair were coded to account for multimodal patterns. Results show that children produced more speech-only lexical self-repairs, enhancing word retrieval. Children also relied more on non-referential beats and iconic gestures during the repair sequence. Thus, gestures are not only linked to discourse elaboration, but they are strongly intertwined with speech monitoring. Multimodal repairs allow speakers to signal the fact that a revision is taking place, therefore facilitating mutual understanding in interaction throughout nonverbal cues.