The role of gesture in language development and evolution.

人们说话时自然会做手势。关于这些手势在儿童语言发展中所起的作用仍然知之甚少。我的研究集中在标志性手势的作用上--伴随着讲话的手势，说明了正在说的话。例如，你可以摆动你的食指和中指来描绘“走路”，或者把你的手放在嘴边，好像拿着一个杯子来描绘“喝酒”。孩子们在3岁时就能理解这些标志性的手势，我的博士研究表明，看到成年人在说话时做出这些手势对孩子的语言学习是有影响的。研究如何刺激学龄前儿童的词汇量增长是非常重要的，因为这个年龄段的儿童词汇量的大小和技能是以后学校成功的主要预测因素。在研究期间，我将从一个3岁儿童的实验中收集数据，这将帮助我们更好地理解看到标志性手势如何促进单词学习。我将参观当地的托儿所，和96个孩子一起玩一个基于计算机的单词学习游戏。我将在发展心理学的两个顶级科学期刊上发表我的研究结果和我的博士论文，我将在匈牙利布达佩斯的一个关于认知发展的国际会议上展示这些研究结果。我还将制定一个Leverhulme博士后奖学金计划，以扩展我的博士研究。我将设计一系列基于实验室的实验，帮助我们研究父母如何使用非语言交流（例如面部表情，肢体语言和手势）来教孩子新单词。我将建议分析父母和孩子的身体位置（面对面或并排）以及眼神接触，触摸和手势。此外，我还将访问两个国际领先的研究小组，开展关于母婴互动的合作研究。我将参观西蒙娜·皮卡的生物认知实验室，那里收集了生活在野外的黑猩猩母亲和它们的幼崽之间自然主义社会互动的视频记录。我还将参观苏珊·戈尔丁·梅多的手势实验室，该实验室收集了父母和孩子在家中自然互动的视频记录。我将获得这些独特数据集的选定部分，并进一步发展我的资助建议的想法。在我未来的研究中，我想比较人类和类人猿在母子互动中使用手势的情况，这可以告诉我们更多关于人类沟通起源的信息。我将与两位主持人一起开发一个玛丽-居里全球奖学金申请，提出一系列比较研究。我将在五个公众参与活动中向普通观众传达我的研究。首先，我将动员一组研究人员在伯明翰的NEC婴儿展上与父母交谈。超过17，000名父母参加了为期三天的活动，为他们的新宝宝的到来做准备。我会告诉家长关于儿童发展研究的重要性，这将导致家长重视儿童研究，并允许他们与研究人员分享他们的经验。我将创建一个信息传单，家长带回家，与我的研究和访问大学涉及的一般信息。其次，我将参观19个当地图书馆的家庭活动，与家长讨论儿童发展研究的重要性。第三，我将参观考文垂赫伯特美术馆的婴儿感官课程，也通知那里的父母，这样我就可以接触到更广泛的观众。第四，我将出版一份数字通讯，提供有关语言和手势发展研究的最新发现的信息。最后，我会定期更新沃里克儿童研究小组的社交媒体页面（Facebook和Twitter），以便关注者可以收到有关我建议的研究活动的更新。

People naturally produce gestures when they speak. Little is still known about the role these gestures play in children's language development. My research focused on the role of iconic gestures - gesticulations that accompany speech and illustrate what is being said. For instance, you can wiggle your index and middle fingers to depict "walking" or bring your hand to your mouth as if holding a glass to depict "drinking". Children understand these iconic gestures by age 3 and my PhD research suggested that seeing adults produce these gestures while speaking is formative for children's language learning. Studying the ways we can stimulate vocabulary growth in preschool-aged children is very important, because the vobulary size and skills of children at this age are major predictors of later school success.During the fellowship, I will collect data from one experiment with 3-year-old children that will help us to better understand how seeing iconic gestures facilitates word learning. I will visit local nurseries to play a computer-based word learning game with 96 children. I will publish my research findings from this experiment and from my PhD dissertation in two top-tier scientific journals in developmental psychology and I will present those research findings at one international conference on cognitive development, in Budapest, Hungary.I will also develop a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellowship proposal that extends my PhD research. I will design a series of lab-based experiments that help us investigate how parents can use nonverbal communication (e.g. facial expressions, body language, and hand gestures) to teach their child new words. I will propose to analyse body position of the parent and child (face-to-face or side-by-side) and eye contact, touch, and gestures. Moreover, I will visit two internationally leading research groups to develop collaborative research on mother-child interactions. I will visit Simone Pika's biocognition lab, which has collected video recordings of naturalistic social interactions between chimpanzee mothers and their young living in the wild. I will also visit with Susan Goldin-Meadow's gesture lab, which has collected video recorings of naturalistic interactions between parents and children in their family homes. I will gain access to selected parts of these unique datasets and further develop my ideas for a funding proposal. In my future research, I would like to compare the use of gesture in mother-child interactions in humans and great apes, which could tell us more about the origins of human communication. I will develop a Marie-Curie Global Fellowship application with the two hosts that proposes a series of comparative studies.I will communicate my research to the general audience in five public engagement activities. First, I will mobilise a team of researchers to speak to parents at the NEC Baby Show in Birmingham. More than 17,000 parents attend this event over the course of three days to prepare for the arrival of their new baby. I will inform parents about the importance of child development studies, which leads parents to value child research, and allows them to share their experiences with researchers. I will create an information leaflet for parents to take home, with general information about my research and what a visit to the University involves. Second, I will visit family events at 19 local libraries to talk to parents about the importance of child development research. Third, I will visit Baby Sensory sessions at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry to inform parents there as well, so that I can reach a wider audience. Fourth, I will publish a digital newsletter that provides information about recent findings in developmental studies on language and gesture. Finally, I will regularly update the social media pages of Warwick Research with Kids Group (Facebook and Twitter), so that followers can receive updates about my proposed research activities.