The role of gesture in language development and evolution.

人们说话时自然会做手势。这些手势在儿童语言发展中的作用仍然知之甚少。我的研究主要集中在标志性手势的作用上——伴随着说话并说明所说内容的手势。例如，你可以摆动食指和中指来描绘“走路”，或者把你的手放在嘴边，就像拿着杯子一样来描绘“喝酒”。孩子们在3岁的时候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有很大的帮助。研究如何刺激学龄前儿童的词汇量增长是非常重要的，因为这个年龄段儿童的词汇量和技能是未来学业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是如何促进单词学习的。我将访问当地的托儿所，与96名儿童一起玩电脑单词学习游戏。我将在发展心理学的两大顶级科学期刊上发表我的实验研究成果和博士论文，并将在匈牙利布达佩斯举行的认知发展国际会议上展示这些研究成果。我还将开发一个利华休姆博士后奖学金提案，以扩展我的博士研究。我将设计一系列以实验室为基础的实验，帮助我们研究父母如何使用非语言交流（如面部表情、肢体语言和手势）来教孩子新单词。我会建议分析父母和孩子的身体位置（面对面或并排）以及目光接触、触摸和手势。此外，我将访问两个国际领先的研究小组，开展母子互动的合作研究。我将参观西蒙娜·皮卡的生物认知实验室，那里收集了黑猩猩母亲和生活在野外的幼崽之间自然社会互动的录像。我还将参观Susan Goldin-Meadow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。我将获得访问这些独特数据集的选定部分，并进一步发展我的资助提案的想法。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交流的起源。我将与两位主持人一起提出一份玛丽-居里全球奖学金申请，提出一系列比较研究。我将在五次公众参与活动中向公众传达我的研究。首先，我将动员一组研究人员在伯明翰NEC婴儿展上与父母们交谈。超过17000名父母参加了这个为期三天的活动，为新生儿的到来做准备。我将告诉家长儿童发展研究的重要性，这将使家长重视儿童研究，并允许他们与研究人员分享他们的经验。我将制作一份信息传单，让家长带回家，上面有我的研究的一般信息，以及参观大学的内容。其次，我将参观19个地方图书馆的家庭活动，与家长谈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会议，也告诉那里的父母，这样我就可以接触到更广泛的受众。第四，我将出版一份电子通讯，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Warwick Research with Kids Group的社交媒体页面（Facebook和Twitter），让关注者可以随时了解我提出的研究活动。

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.