BBC News - gestures 'develop infant speech'
I've just had a morning of tutorials with students working on dissertations at various levels. One thing we often talk about is how surprising the results of an investigation are likely to be.
This news report is interesting from that point of view (as well as more generally). The researchers are reported as describing their results as 'surprising' since they 'contradict the folklore'. I think that's right in that some people think that the more articulate you are the less you need to use gestures. But is it surprising that toddlers who communicate more nonverbally at 14 months go on to have higher vocabularies at four-and-a-half? I suppose it depends on what hypotheses you're already assuming. So the question 'are your results surprising?' always depends on what assumptions you're already making.
B-)
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