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Gesture and speech are tightly linked and form a single system in typical development. In this review, we ask whether and how the role of gesture and relations between speech and gesture vary in atypical development by focusing on two groups of children: those with peri‐ or prenatal unilateral brain injury (children with BI) and preterm born (PT) children. We describe the gestures of children with BI and PT children and the relations between gesture and speech, as well as highlight various cognitive and motor antecedents of the speech‐gesture link observed in these populations. We then examine possible factors contributing to the variability in gesture production of these atypically developing children. Last, we discuss the potential role of seeing others’ gestures, particularly those of parents, in mediating the predictive relationships between early gestures and upcoming changes in speech. We end the review by charting new areas for future research that will help us better understand the robust roles of gestures for typical and atypically‐developing child populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hand gestures play an integral role in multimodal language and communication. Even though the self-oriented functions of gestures, such as activating a speaker's lexicon and maintaining visuospatial imagery, have been emphasized, gestures' functions in creative thinking are not well-established. In the current study, we investigated the role of iconic gestures in verbal divergent thinking—a creative thinking process related to generating many novel ideas. Based on previous findings, we hypothesized that iconic gesture use would facilitate divergent thinking in young adults, especially those with high mental imagery skills. Participants performed Guildford's Alternative Uses Task in a gesture-spontaneous and in a gesture-encouraged condition. We measured fluency (number of ideas), originality (uniqueness of ideas), flexibility (number of idea categories), and elaboration (number of details) in divergent thinking. The results showed that producing iconic gestures in the gesture-encouraged condition positively predicted fluency, originality, and elaboration. In the gesture-spontaneous condition, producing iconic gestures also positively predicted elaboration but negatively predicted flexibility. Mental imagery skills did not interact with the effects of gestures on divergent thinking. These results suggest that iconic gestures are a promising candidate for enhancing almost all aspects of divergent thinking. Overall, the current study adds a new dimension to the self-oriented function of iconic gestures, that is, their contribution to creative thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporal perspectives allow us to place ourselves and temporal events on a timeline, making it easier to conceptualize time. This study investigates how we take different temporal perspectives in our temporal gestures. We asked participants (n = 36) to retell temporal scenarios written in the Moving‐Ego, Moving‐Time, and Time‐Reference‐Point perspectives in spontaneous and encouraged gesture conditions. Participants took temporal perspectives mostly in similar ways regardless of the gesture condition. Perspective comparisons showed that temporal gestures of our participants resonated better with the Ego‐ (i.e., Moving‐Ego and Moving‐Time) versus Time‐Reference‐Point distinction instead of the classical Moving‐Ego versus Moving‐Time contrast. Specifically, participants mostly produced more Moving‐Ego and Time‐Reference‐Point gestures for the corresponding scenarios and speech; however, the Moving‐Time perspective was not adopted more than the others in any condition. Similarly, the Moving‐Time gestures did not favor an axis over the others, whereas Moving‐Ego gestures were mostly sagittal and Time‐Reference‐Point gestures were mostly lateral. These findings suggest that we incorporate temporal perspectives into our temporal gestures to a considerable extent; however, the classical Moving‐Ego and Moving‐Time classification may not hold for temporal gestures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language about time is an integral part of how we spatialise time. Factors like temporal focus can be related to time spatialisation as well. The current study investigates the role of language in how we spatialise time, using a temporal diagram task modified to include the lateral axis. We asked participants to place temporal events provided in non-metaphorical, sagittal metaphorical, and non-sagittal metaphorical scenarios on a temporal diagram. We found that sagittal metaphors elicited sagittal spatialisations of time, whereas the other two types elicited lateral spatialisations. Participants sometimes used the sagittal and lateral axes in combination to spatialise time. Exploratory analyses indicated that individuals' time management habits, temporal distance, and event order in written scenarios were related to time spatialisations. Their temporal focus scores, however, were not. Findings suggest that temporal language plays an important role in how we map space onto time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We communicate emotions in a multimodal way, yet non-verbal emotion communication is a relatively understudied area of research. In three experiments, we investigated the role of gesture characteristics (e.g., type, size in space) on individuals' processing of emotional content. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate the emotional intensity of emotional narratives from the videoclips either with iconic or beat gestures. Participants in the iconic gesture condition rated the emotional intensity higher than participants in the beat gesture condition. In Experiment 2, the size of gestures and its interaction with gesture type were investigated in a within-subjects design. Participants again rated the emotional intensity of emotional narratives from the videoclips. Although individuals overall rated narrow gestures more emotionally intense than wider gestures, no effects of gesture type, or gesture size and type interaction were found. Experiment 3 was conducted to check whether findings of Experiment 2 were due to viewing gestures in all videoclips. We compared the gesture and no gesture (i.e., speech only) conditions and showed that there was not a difference between them on emotional ratings. However, we could not replicate the findings related to gesture size of Experiment 2. Overall, these findings indicate the importance of examining gesture's role in emotional contexts and that different gesture characteristics such as size of gestures can be considered in nonverbal communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using hand gestures benefits children's divergent thinking and enhances verbal improvisation in adults. In the present study, we asked whether gestures were also associated with convergent thinking by activating individuals' verbal lexicon and maintaining their visuospatial imagery. We tested young adults on verbal and visual convergent thinking, controlling for their mental imagery skills. Results showed that gestures and mental imagery skills play a role in verbal but not visual convergent thinking. Regardless of whether gestures were spontaneous or encouraged, we found a negative association between overall gesture frequency and verbal convergent thinking or individuals with low mental imagery, and a positive association for individuals with high mental imagery. Representational gestures benefited verbal convergent thinking for everyone except those who had low mental imagery and no experience with the task. Performing beat gestures hampered verbal convergent thinking in people with lower mental imagery capacity and helped those who had high mental imagery and previous experience with the task. We also found that gesturing can benefit people with lower verbal abilities on verbal convergent thinking, however, high spatial imagery abilities were required for gestures to boost verbal convergent thinking. The current study adds a new dimension to both the embodied creativity literature and the kaleidoscope of individual differences in gesture research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speakers employ co-speech gestures when thinking and speaking; however, gesture's role in autobiographical episodic representations is not known. Based on the gesture-for-conceptualization framework, we propose that gestures, particularly representational ones, support episodic event representations by activating existing episodic elements and causing new ones to be formed in the autobiographical recollections. These gestures may also undertake information-chunking roles to allow for further processing during remembering, such as a sense of recollective experience. Participants (N = 41) verbally narrated three events (a past autobiographical, a future autobiographical, and a non-autobiographical event) and then rated their phenomenological characteristics. We found that, even though gesture use was not different across the three event conditions, representational gestures were positively associated with the episodic event details as well as their recollective quality within the past autobiographical event narratives. These associations were not observed in future event narrations. These findings suggest that gestures are potentially instrumental in the retrieval of details in autobiographical memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive memory retains information that would increase survival chances and reproductive success, resulting in the survival processing effect. Less is known about whether the reliability of the information interacts with the survival processing effect. From an adaptive point, information from reliable sources should lead to better encoding of information, particularly in a survival context. In Turkish, specific linguistic components called evidentiality markers encode whether the information presented is firsthand (direct) or not (indirect), providing insight into source reliability. In two experiments, we examined the effect of evidentiality markers on recall across survival and nonsurvival (moving) contexts, predicting that the survival processing effect would be stronger for information marked with evidentiality markers indicating direct information. Results of both experiments yielded a robust survival processing effect, as the sentences processed for their relevance to survival were better remembered than those processed for their relevance to nonsurvival events. Yet the marker type did not affect retention, regardless of being tested as a between- or within-subject factor. Specifically, the survival processing effect persisted even with evidentiality markers indicating indirect information, which suggests that the processing of survival-related information may be privileged even if potentially unreliable. We discuss these results in the context of recent studies of the interaction of language with memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inference-making is a critical process in understanding and processing information daily. People synthesize inputs into a whole and retain the whole (gist) instead of specific parts (verbatim). False recognition of inferred information offers evidence for it. We conducted two studies to examine whether memory errors occurred similarly when bilinguals were tested separately and concurrently on two languages, and whether bilinguals remembered the language in which the information was received (language tag).We recruited Turkish native speakers who spoke English as a second language. After inducing spatial inferences about objects, we tested participants on configuration, sentence recognition, and language recognition in Turkish, English, and dual-language conditions. We measured their second language proficiency and executive functioning with standardized assessments.We performed within-subjects analyses of covariance to investigate the within-language differences in sentence recognition and the role of individual cognitive differences (N = 34 in Experiment 1, N = 48 in Experiment 2).Experiment 1 showed that inferences were falsely recognized in L1 (Turkish) and L2 (English) conditions, but not in the dual-language. We found no effect of individual cognitive differences. In Experiment 2, we replicated Experiment 1 and found that false recognition of inferred sentences was predicted more by lower executive functions (EF) scores and higher second language proficiency. In both experiments, participants accurately identified the language tag. Higher EF scores predicted higher tag accuracy. We conclude that inferring information in the second language induces memory errors, and inferences are tagged with the language of encoding.We used an ecologically valid sentence-level paradigm to test inferences and their connection to bilingual false memories in the second language and dual-language contexts. We explored the individual differences in language and cognitive abilities.Bilingual information processing is influenced significantly by exposure to stimuli, task difficulty, the language context, and language proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age‐related changes are observed in the speech and gestures of neurotypical individuals. Older adults are more disfluent in speech and use fewer representational gestures (e.g., holding two hands close to each other to mean small), compared to younger adults. Using gestures, especially representational gestures, is common in difficult tasks to aid the conceptualization process and to facilitate lexical access. This study investigates how aging can affect gesture production and the co‐occurrence between gesture and speech disfluency. We elicited speech and gesture samples from younger and older adults (N = 60) by using a painting description task that provided concrete and abstract contexts. Results indicated that albeit the two age groups revealed comparable overall speech disfluency and gesture rates, they differed in terms of how their disfluencies and gestures were distributed across specific categories. Moreover, the proportion of speech disfluencies that occur with a gesture was significantly higher for younger than older adults. However, the two age groups were comparable in terms of the proportion of gestures that were accompanied by a speech disfluency. These findings suggest that younger adults' language production system might be better at benefiting from other modalities, that is, gesture, to resolve temporary problems in speech planning. However, from a gesture perspective, it might be difficult to differentiate between gestures' self‐oriented and communicative functions and understand their role in speech facilitation. Focusing on specific cases where speech disfluency and gestures co‐occur and considering individual differences might bring insight into multimodal communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross‐category hues are differentiated easier than otherwise equidistant hues that belong to the same linguistic category. This effect is typically manifested through both accuracy and response time gains in tasks with a memory component, whereas only response times are affected when there is no memory component. This raises the question of whether there is a common generative process underlying the differential behavioral manifestations of category advantage in color perception. For instance, within the framework of noisy evidence accumulation models, changes in accuracy can be readily attributed to an increase in the efficacy of perceptual evidence integration (after controlling for threshold setting), whereas changes in response time can also be attributed to shorter nondecisional delays (e.g., due to facilitated signal detection). To address the latent decision processes underlying category advantage across different behavioral demands, we introduce a decision‐theoretic perspective (i.e., diffusion decision model) to categorical color perception in three complementary experiments. In Experiment 1, we collected data from a binary color naming task (1) to determine the green–blue boundary in our sample and (2) to trace how parameter estimates of interest in the model output change as a function of color typicality. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used same‐different task paradigms (with and without a memory component, respectively) and traced the category advantage in color discrimination in two parameters of the diffusion decision model: nondecision time and drift rate. An increase in drift rate predominantly characterized the category advantage in both tasks. Our results show that improved efficiency in perceptual evidence integration is a common driving force behind different manifestations of category advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) is one of the most widely used complex EF task for various populations. However, it seems questionable to employ the task for preschool‐aged children due to their lack of numerical efficiency while sorting cards according to the number dimension. The present study aimed to examine the association of numeracy skills with different EF‐related abilities as measured by the WCST. For the assessment of numeracy skills, we used the Early Numeracy Test (ENT). One hundred and fourteen Turkish children between the ages of 5 and 8 were administered the WCST and ENT in a counterbalanced order. Results revealed a significant correlation only between the three ENT scores and the concept formation factor of the WCST, indicating a significant relationship between the WCST performance and numeracy skills in terms of concept formation. This finding highlights the specific relation between numeracy skills and subcomponents of the WCST and points to potential interfering variables that should be taken into account while evaluating the scores of the sorting tasks for children between the ages of 5 and 8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ageing has effects both on language and gestural communication skills. Although gesture use is similar between younger and older adults, the use of representational gestures (e.g., drawing a line with fingers on the air to indicate a road) decreases with age. This study investigates whether this change in the production of representational gestures is related to individuals' working memory and/or mental imagery skills. We used three gesture tasks (daily activity description, story completion, and address description) to obtain spontaneous co-speech gestures from younger and older individuals (N = 60). Participants also completed the Corsi working memory task and a mental imagery task. Results showed that although the two age groups' overall gesture frequencies were similar across the three tasks, the younger adults used relatively higher proportions of representational gestures than the older adults only in the address description task. Regardless of age, the mental imagery but not working memory score was associated with the use of representational gestures only in this task. However, the use of spatial words in the address description task did not differ between the two age groups. The mental imagery or working memory scores did not associate with the spatial word use. These findings suggest that mental imagery can play a role in gesture production. Gesture and speech production might have separate timelines in terms of being affected by the ageing process, particularly for spatial content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Listeners are sensitive to speakers' co-speech iconic gestures. Concurrent visual and verbal information compete for attentional resources during multimodal comprehension. The current study examined the role of individual differences in visual-spatial vs. verbal abilities on individuals' differential sensitivity to gestural vs. spoken expressions. Turkish-speaking adults (N = 83) were tested on their sensitivity to concurrent gesture vs. speech in an online task (Kelly, S. D., Özyürek, A., & Maris, E. (2010a). Two sides of the same coin. Psychological Science, 21(2), 260–267) and were administered spatial and verbal working memory measures. Participants were slower and less accurate when gesture and speech were incongruent to one another compared to the baseline condition, in which they expressed congruent information. People with higher spatial working memory capacity were more efficient in processing gestures whereas people with higher verbal working memory capacity were more sensitive to spoken expressions. These suggest that not all people are equally sensitive to co-speech gestures and some people may benefit more from gestures during comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before infants produce words, they can discriminate changes in motion event components such as manner (how an action is performed) and path (trajectory of an action). Individual differences in nonlinguistic event categorization are related to children's later verb comprehension (Konishi, Stahl, Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2016). We asked: (a) Do infants learning Turkish, a verb-framed language, attend to both manner and path changes in motion events? (b) Is early detection of path and manner related to children's later verb comprehension and (c) how they describe motion events? Thirty-two Turkish-reared children were tested at three time points. At Time 1, infants (Mage = 14.5months) were tested on their detection of changes in path and manner using the Preferential Looking Paradigm. At Time 2, children were tested on their receptive language skills (Mage = 22.07months). At Time 3, children performed 3 tasks (Mage = 35.05months): a verb comprehension task, an event description task depicting motion events with different path and manner combinations, and an expressive language task. The ability to detect changes in event components at Time 1 predicted verb comprehension abilities at Time 3, beyond general receptive and expressive vocabulary skills at Times 2 and 3. Infants who noticed changes in path and manner at Time 1 used fewer manner-only descriptions and more path-any descriptions (i.e., descriptions that included a path component with or without manner) in their speech at Time 3. These findings suggest that early detection of event components is associated not only with verb comprehension, but also with how children lexicalize event components in line with their native language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many training programs have aimed to improve creative thinking abilities in various settings. The study of relevant literature revealed a relatively lower number of creativity programs for children than those developed for adults. The current work introduces a new and comprehensive nineweek long creativity intervention program implemented (out of school-setting) in 8- to 11-year-old children of socioeconomically disadvantaged families in Turkey. The intervention program was organized around four main themes (Persona, Object, Surrounding, Experience) and composed of nine activities: collection making, identity box, building a memory-device, designing an object, sensory mapping, designing a space, visual storytelling, exploring an imaginary planet, and solving a social conflict. Children (n = 159) were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, and they took the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking both before and after the intervention. Results showed that children in the experimental group had significantly higher verbal fluency and originality scores at the posttest compared to the control group. These results provide further evidence for the trainability of creativity and introduce a novel, affordable creativity intervention program that is feasible enough to be implemented in and out of the school setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information can be conveyed via multiple channels such as verbal and gestural (visual) channels during communication. Sometimes the information from different channels does not match (e.g., saying right while pointing to the left). How do addressees choose which information to act upon in such cases? In two experiments, we investigated this issue by having participants follow instructions on how to move objects on the screen. Experiment 1 examined whether people's choice of channel can be altered by feedback favoring either the verbal or the gestural channel. In Experiment 2, there was no feedback and participants were free to choose either channel. We also assessed participants' verbal and visuospatial working memory capacities. Results showed that, when faced with contradicting information, there is a natural bias at the group level toward relying on the verbal channel, although this bias can be temporarily altered by probabilistic feedback. Moreover, when labels were shorter and of higher frequency, participants relied more on the verbal channel. In the absence of feedback, the capacity of individuals' visual, but not verbal, working memory determined reliance on one channel versus the other. Collectively, these results show that information selection in communication is influenced by group-level biases, as well as the properties of items and characteristics of individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether the metacognitive system monitors the potential positive effects of gestures on spatial thinking. Participants (N = 59, 31F, Mage = 21.67) performed a mental rotation task, consisting of 24 problems varying in difficulty, and they evaluated their confidence in their answers to problems in either gesture or control conditions. The results revealed that performance and confidence were higher in the gesture condition, in which the participants were asked to use their gestures during problem-solving, compared with the control condition, extending the literature by evidencing gestures' role in metacognition. Yet, the effect was only evident for females, who already performed worse than males, and when the problems were difficult. Encouraging gestures adversely affected performance and confidence in males. Such results suggest that gestures selectively influence cognition and metacognition and highlight the importance of task-related (i.e., difficulty) and individual-related variables (i.e., sex) in elucidating the links between gestures, confidence, and spatial thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gestures might serve communicative functions by supplementing spoken expressions or restorative functions by facilitating speech production. Also, speakers with speech deficits use gestures to compensate for their speech impairments. In this study, we examined gesture use in speakers with and without speech impairments and how spoken spatial expressions changed when gestures were restrained. Six patients with speech problems and with left frontal and/or temporal lesions and 20 neurotypical controls described motion events in 3 different conditions (spontaneous gesture, only speech, and only gesture). In addition to the group analyses, we ran case analyses. Results showed that patients used more gestures compared to controls. Gestures served both communicative and restorative functions for patients whereas controls only used gestures for communicative purposes. Case analyses revealed that there were differential patterns among patients. Overall, gesture production is multifunctional and gestures serve different functions for different populations as well as within a population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Force dynamics theory can be applied to consider the development of causal reasoning. • Five- to 6-year-olds infer causes of motion that align with semantic categories. • Five- to 6-year-olds focus on a single cause when two force vectors are not parallel. • Children's reasoning about causal forces reflects causal and semantic interpretations. Abstract Göksun, George, Hirsh-Pasek, and Golinkoff (2013) used force dynamics, or the semantic categories defined by spatial arrays of forces, to study the development of preschoolers' predictions about the outcomes of forces working in concert. The current study extends this approach to problems requiring inferences about causal factors. In total, 30 5- and 6-year-old children were asked to identify and coordinate forces to achieve a result. Problems varied in the number and orientation of forces, mirroring spatial arrays characteristic of categories like prevent (i.e., opposing forces). Children successfully inferred causes of single- and dual-force events, performing best when problems reflected the spatial arrays of forces described in language. Results support force dynamics as a valuable framework for the development of force and motion representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gestures can provide an excellent natural alternative to verbal communication in people with aphasia (PWA). However, despite numerous studies focusing on gesture production in aphasia, it is still a matter of debate whether the gesture system remains intact after language impairment and how PWA use gestures to improve communication. A likely source for the contradicting results is that many studies were conducted on individual cases or in heterogeneous groups of individuals with additional cognitive deficits such as conceptual impairment and comorbid conditions such as limb apraxia. Aims: The goal of the current study was to evaluate the integrity and function of gestures in PWA in light of cognitive theories of language-gesture relationship. Since all such theories presuppose the integrity of the conceptual system, and the absence of comorbid conditions that selectively impair gesturing (i.e., limb apraxia), our sample was selected to fulfill these assumptions. Methods & Procedures: We examined gesture production in eight PWA with preserved auditory comprehension, no comorbidities, and various degrees of expressive deficit, as well as 11 age- and education-matched controls, while they described events in 20 normed video clips. Both speech and gesture data were coded for quantitative measures of informativeness, and gestures were grouped into several functional categories (matching, complementary, compensatory, social cueing, and facilitating lexical retrieval) based on correspondence to the accompanying speech. Using rigorous group analyses, individual-case analyses, and analyses of individual differences, we provide converging evidence for the integrity and type of function(s) served by gesturing in PWA. Outcomes & Results: Our results indicate that the gesture system can remain functional even when language production is severely impaired. Our PWA heavily relied on iconic gestures to compensate for their language impairment, and the degree of such compensation was correlated with the extent of language impairment. In addition, we found evidence that producing iconic gestures was related to higher success rates in resolving lexical retrieval difficulties. Conclusions: When comprehension and comorbidities are controlled for, impairment of language and gesture systems is dissociable. In PWA with good comprehension, gesturing can provide an excellent means to both compensate for the impaired language and act as a retrieval cue. Implications for cognitive theories of language-gesture relationship and therapy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilingual and monolingual children might have different styles of using multimodal language. This study investigates speech disfluency and gesture production of 5- and 7-year-old Turkish monolingual (N = 61) and Turkish–English bilingual children (N = 51). We examined monolinguals' Turkish narratives and bilinguals' Turkish and English narratives. Results indicated that bilinguals were more disfluent than monolinguals, particularly for silent and filled (e.g., umm) pauses. Bilinguals used silent pauses and repetitions (e.g., cat cat) more frequently in English than in Turkish. Gesture use was comparable across language and age groups, except for iconic gestures. Monolinguals produced more iconic gestures than bilinguals. Children's overall gesture frequency predicted disfluency rates only in Turkish. Different gesture types might be orchestrated in the multimodal system, contributing to narrative fluency. The use of disfluency and gesture types might provide insight into bilingual and monolingual children's language development and communication strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Language learners must differentiate visual details that are distinguished lexically in their language. • Monolingual infants demonstrate sensitivity to non-lexical visual cues at 14 months, followed by a decline at 19 months. • Bilingual infants were tested on their sensitivity to non-lexical visual cues at 14-, 19- and 24 months. • Bilingual infants demonstrated postponed sensitivities as well as increased flexibility relative to monolingual infants. It is well known that infants undergo developmental change in how they respond to language-relevant visual contrasts. For example, when viewing motion events, infants' sensitivities to background information ("ground-path cues," e.g., whether a background is flat and continuous or bounded) change with age. Prior studies with English and Japanese monolingual infants have demonstrated that 14-month-old infants discriminate between motion events that take place against different ground-paths (e.g., an unbounded field vs a bounded street). By 19 months of age, this sensitivity becomes more selective in monolingual infants; only learners of languages that lexically contrast these categories, such as Japanese, discriminate between such events. In this study, we investigated this progression in bilingual infants. We first replicated past reports of an age-related decline in ground-path sensitivity from 14 to 19 months in English monolingual infants living in a multilingual society. English–Mandarin bilingual infants living in that same society were then tested on discrimination of ground-path cues at 14, 19, and 24 months. Although neither the English nor Mandarin language differentiates motion events based on ground-path cues, bilingual infants demonstrated protracted sensitivity to these cues. Infants exhibited a lack of discrimination at 14 months, followed by discrimination at 19 months and a subsequent decline in discrimination at 24 months. In addition, bilingual infants demonstrated more fine-grained sensitivities to subtle ground cues not observed in monolingual infants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sound symbolism, the iconic link between speech sounds and meanings, helps children’s verb learning. In sound symbolically rich languages such as Turkish, hearing sound symbolic words might facilitate early verb learning and later language-specific expressions of motion events, by providing an easier way to map verbs onto events. These links could be much stronger for children who had difficulties in word-referent mapping (e.g., preterm children). The current study examined the association of Turkish-speaking parents’ sound symbolic input at 20 months with children’s concurrent verb knowledge and later motion event descriptions at 48 months. Ninety-one parent-infant dyads (Mage = 19.92 months, SD = 1.38; 41 preterms) were observed at 20 months, where we measured sound symbolic input and verb knowledge. Sixty-four of these dyads participated in a motion event description task at 48 months (25 preterms, Mage = 48.79 months, SD = 1.68), where we coded how children use path (the trajectory of motion) and manner (how an action is performed) of a motion. Results from the robust regression models suggested that for preterm children, parents’ sound symbolic input used in adverb forms was positively and concurrently related to children’s verb knowledge. Only for full-term children, sound symbolic input (used as adverbs) predicted full-term children’s use of both path and manner information in their descriptions at 48 months. Lack of replication of these findings with outlier-removed analyses could only suggest a trend toward the differential contributions of sound symbolic input in different child populations and the importance of sentential cues in sound symbolic input in verb learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language-dependent recall refers to the language-specific retrieval of memories in which the retrieval success depends on the match between the languages of encoding and retrieval. The present study investigated language-dependent recall in terms of memory accuracy, false memory, and episodic memory characteristics in the free recall of fictional stories. We also asked how language-dependent memories were influenced by language proficiency and visual imagery. One hundred and thirty-seven native Turkish (L1) speakers who were second-language learners of English (L2) were divided into four groups in which they read fictional stories and then recalled them: (1) Turkish reading–Turkish recall, (2) English reading–English recall, (3) English reading–Turkish recall, (4) Turkish reading–English recall. Regardless of the match between L1 or L2, accuracy was higher when participants read and recalled the stories in the same language than when they did it in different languages, showing the language-dependent recall effect. Notably, the effect of match or mismatch between encoding and retrieval languages on accuracy did not depend on L2 proficiency and visual imagery. In addition, false memories were salient, particularly for participants who read the stories in L2 but retrieved them in L1. Overall, our findings suggest that accuracy-oriented memory research provides a comprehensive investigation of language-dependent recall, addressing the links of language-dependent memories with accuracy, false memory, and episodic memory characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilinguals tend to produce more co-speech hand gestures to compensate for reduced communicative proficiency when speaking in their L2. We here investigated L1-Turkish and L2-English speakers' gesture use in an emotional context. We specifically asked whether and how (1) speakers gestured differently while retelling L1 versus L2 and positive versus negative narratives and (2) gesture production during retellings was associated with speakers' later subjective emotional intensity ratings of those narratives. We asked 22 participants to read and then retell eight emotion-laden narratives (half positive, half negative; half Turkish, half English). We analysed gesture frequency during the entire retelling and during emotional speech only (i.e., gestures that co-occur with emotional phrases such as "happy"). Our results showed that participants produced more representational gestures in L2 than in L1; however, they used more representational gestures during emotional content in L1 than in L2. Participants also produced more co-emotional speech gestures when retelling negative than positive narratives, regardless of language, and more beat gestures co-occurring with emotional speech in negative narratives in L1. Furthermore, using more gestures when retelling a narrative was associated with increased emotional intensity ratings for narratives. Overall, these findings suggest that (1) bilinguals might use representational gestures to compensate for reduced linguistic proficiency in their L2, (2) speakers use more gestures to express negative emotional information, particularly during emotional speech, and (3) gesture production may enhance the encoding of emotional information, which subsequently leads to the intensification of emotion perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focal brain injury can have detrimental effects on the pragmatics of communication. This study examined narrative production by unilateral brain damaged people (n=36) and healthy controls and focused on the complexity (content and coherence) and the evaluative aspect of their narratives to test the general hypothesis that the left hemisphere is biased to process microlinguistic information and the right hemisphere is biased to process macrolinguistic information. We found that people with left hemisphere damage's (LHD) narratives were less likely to maintain the overall theme of the story and produced fewer evaluative comments in their narratives. These deficits correlated with their performances on microlinguistic linguistic tasks. People with the right hemisphere damage (RHD) seemed to be preserved in expressing narrative complexity and evaluations as a group. Yet, single case analyses revealed that particular regions in the right hemisphere such as damage to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the anterior and superior temporal gyrus, the middle temporal gyrus, and the supramarginal gyrus lead to problems in creating narratives. Our findings demonstrate that both hemispheres are necessary to produce competent narrative production. LHD people's poor production is related to their microlinguistic language problems whereas RHD people's impaired abilities can be associated with planning and working memory abilities required to relate events in a narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People often use spontaneous gestures when talking about space, such as when giving directions. In a recent study from our lab, we examined whether focal brain-injured individuals’ naming motion event components of manner and path (represented in English by verbs and prepositions, respectively) are impaired selectively, and whether gestures compensate for impairment in speech. Left or right hemisphere damaged patients and elderly control participants were asked to describe motion events (e.g., walking around) depicted in brief videos. Results suggest that producing verbs and prepositions can be separately impaired in the left hemisphere and gesture production compensates for naming impairments when damage involves specific areas in the left temporal cortex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People often use spontaneous gestures when communicating spatial information. We investigated focal brain-injured individuals to test the hypotheses that (1) naming motion event components of manner-path (represented by verbs-prepositions in English) are impaired selectively, (2) gestures compensate for impaired naming. Patients with left or right hemisphere damage (LHD or RHD) and elderly control participants were asked to describe motion events (e.g., running across) depicted in brief videos. Damage to the left posterior middle frontal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG) produced impairments in naming paths of motion; lesions to the left caudate and adjacent white matter produced impairments in naming manners of motion. While the frequency of spontaneous gestures were low, lesions to the left aSTG significantly correlated with greater production of path gestures. These suggest that producing prepositions-verbs can be separately impaired and gesture production compensates for naming impairments when damage involves left aSTG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience all have rich histories in language research. Crosstalk among these disciplines, as realized in studies of phonology, is pivotal for understanding a fundamental challenge for first and second language learners (SLLs): learning verbs. Linguistic and behavioral research with monolinguals suggests that infants attend to foundational event components (e.g.,path, manner). Language then heightens or dampens attention to these components as children map word to world in language-specific ways. Cross-linguistic differences in semantic organization also reveal sources of struggles for SLLs. We discuss how better integrating neuroscience into this literature can unlock additional mysteries of verb learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do children evaluate complex causal events? This study investigates preschoolers' representation of force dynamics in causal scenes, asking whether (a) children understand how single and dual forces impact an object's movement and (b) this understanding varies across cause types (Cause, Enable, Prevent). Three-and-a half- to 5.5-year-olds ( n = 60) played a board game in which they were asked to predict the endpoint of a ball being acted upon by one or two forces. Children mostly understood the interactions of forces underlying each type of cause; only 5.5-year-olds could integrate two contradictory forces. Children perceive force interactions underlying causal events, but some concepts might not be fully understood until later in childhood. This study provides a new way of thinking about causal relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numbers are conceptualized spatially along a horizontal mental line. This view is supported by mounting evidence from healthy adults and patients with unilateral spatial neglect. Little is known about children's representation of numbers with respect to space. This study investigated elementary school children's directional biases in physical and numerical space to better understand the relation between space and number. We also examined the nature of spatial organization in numerical space. In two separate tasks, children (n= 57) were asked to bisect a physical line and verbally estimate the midpoint of number pairs. In general, results indicated leftward biases in both tasks, but the degree of deviation did not correlate between the tasks. In the number bisection task, leftward bias (underestimating the midpoint) increased as a function of numerical magnitude and interval between number pairs. In contrast, a rightward deviation was found for smaller number pairs. These findings suggest that different underlying spatial attentional mechanisms might be directed in physical and numerical space in young school children, which would be integrated in adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Spatial language helps us to encode relations between objects and organize our thinking. Little is known about the neural instantiations of spatial language. Using voxel-lesion symptom mapping (VLSM), we tested the hypothesis that focal brain injured patients who had damage to left frontal–parietal peri-Sylvian regions would have difficulty in naming spatial relations between objects. We also investigated the relationship between impaired verbalization of spatial relations and spontaneous gesture production. Patients with left or right hemisphere damage and elderly control participants were asked to name static (e.g., an apple on a book) and dynamic (e.g., a pen moves over a box) locative relations depicted in brief video clips. The correct use of prepositions in each task and gestures that represent the spatial relations were coded. Damage to the left posterior middle frontal gyrus, the left inferior frontal gyrus, and the left anterior superior temporal gyrus were related to impairment in naming spatial relations. Production of spatial gestures negatively correlated with naming accuracy, suggesting that gestures might help or compensate for difficulty with lexical access. Additional analyses suggested that left hemisphere patients who had damage to the left posterior middle frontal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus gestured less than expected, if gestures are used to compensate for impairments in retrieving prepositions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Visual search plays an important role in guiding behavior. Children have more difficulty performing conjunction search tasks than adults. The present research evaluates whether developmental differences in children's ability to organize serial visual search (i.e., search organization skills) contribute to performance limitations in a typical conjunction search task. We evaluated 134 children between the ages of 2 and 17 on separate tasks measuring search for targets defined by a conjunction of features or by distinct features. Our results demonstrated that children organize their visual search better as they get older. As children's skills at organizing visual search improve they become more accurate at locating targets with conjunction of features amongst distractors, but not for targets with distinct features. Developmental limitations in children's abilities to organize their visual search of the environment are an important component of poor conjunction search in young children. In addition, our findings provide preliminary evidence that, like other visuospatial tasks, exposure to reading may influence children's spatial orientation to the visual environment when performing a visual search. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

To learn motion verbs and prepositions, children must categorize event components such that jumping 1 meter over the puddle and jumping 3 meters over the puddle are both instances of jumping. Thus, children's categories must allow variability in coordinate properties, while preserving the relational component labeled by motion verbs and prepositions. The current study asks if preverbal infants notice within-category distance changes (e.g., height of a jump) more than across-category distance changes, (e.g., over versus under). Results suggest that categorical changes are most important, which has implications for how children carve a continuous world into categories that coincide with language. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To learn motion verbs, infants must be sensitive to the specific event features lexicalized in their language. One event feature important for the acquisition of English motion verbs is the manner of motion. This article examines when and how infants detect manners of motion across variations in the figure's path. Experiment 1 shows that 13- to 15-month-olds ( N = 30) can detect an invariant manner of motion when the figure's path changes. Experiment 2 reveals that reducing the complexity of the events, by dampening the figure's path, helps 10- to 12-month-olds ( N = 19) detect the invariant manner. These findings suggest that: (a) infants notice event features lexicalized in English motion verbs, and (b) attention to manner can be promoted by reducing event complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: To learn relational terms such as verbs and prepositions, children must first dissect and process dynamic event components. This paper investigates the way in which 8- to 14-month-old English-reared infants notice the event components, figure (i.e., the moving entity) and ground (i.e., stationary setting), in both dynamic (Experiment 1) and static representations of events (Experiment 2) for categorical ground distinctions expressed in Japanese, but not in English. We then compare both 14- and 19-month-old English- and Japanese-reared infants’ processing of grounds to understand how language learning interacts with the conceptualization of these constructs (Experiment 3). Results suggest that (1) infants distinguish between figures and grounds in events; (2) they do so differently for static vs. dynamic displays; (3) early in the second year, children from diverse language environments form nonnative – perhaps universal – event categories; and (4) these event categories shift over time as children have more exposure to their native tongue. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Upon witnessing a causal event, do children''s gestures encode causal knowledge that (a) does not appear in their linguistic descriptions or (b) conveys the same information as their sentential expressions? The former use of gesture is considered supplementary; the latter is considered reinforcing. Sixty-four English-speaking children aged 2.5–5 years described an action in which the experimenter pushed a ball across a small pool with a stick. Over time, children produced more complete sentences expressing causal relations, encoding more of the elements in the event. Younger children produced noncausal sentences and location gestures that referred to or highlighted the goal of the action. Older children used both reinforcing and supplementary gestures conveying the instrument (e.g., the stick) and direction (e.g., from left to right) of the action. These findings present a noncausal to causal developmental trajectory both in speech and gesture. Among older children, results also suggest that gestures carry causal information before they form complete sentences to express causal events. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Relational terms (e.g., verbs and prepositions) are the cornerstone of language development, bringing together two distinct fields: linguistic theory and infants' event processing. To acquire relational terms such as run, walk, in, and on, infants must first perceive and conceptualize components of dynamic events such as containment-support, path-manner, source-goal, and figure-ground. Infants must then uncover how the particular language they are learning encodes these constructs. This review addresses the interaction of language learning with infants' conceptualization of these nonlinguistic spatial event components. We present the thesis that infants start with language-general nonlinguistic constructs that are gradually refined and tuned to the requirements of their native language. In effect, infants are trading spaces, maintaining their sensitivity to some relational distinctions while dampening other distinctions, depending on how their native language expresses these constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sound symbols, such as "woof woof" for a dog's barking, imitate the physical properties of their referents. Turkish is a sound symbolically rich language that allows flexible use of such words in different linguistic forms. The current study examined Turkish‐speaking parents' use of sound symbolic words to their 14‐ and 20‐month‐olds and the concurrent and longitudinal relations between parents' sound symbolic input and infants' vocabulary knowledge. Thirty‐four (n = 34) infants were observed at Time‐1 (Mage = 14.23 months, SD = 1.11) and Time‐2 (Mage = 20.30 months, SD = 1.24) during free play sessions with their parents to examine parental input. Infants' vocabulary knowledge was assessed by a parental report. Both the quantity and quality of parental sound symbolic input changed between 14 and 20 months of age. Furthermore, infants' earlier vocabulary knowledge at 14 months negatively predicted parents' later sound symbolic input at 20 months. Last, parents' sound symbolic input was positively and concurrently associated with 14‐month‐olds' vocabulary knowledge but was negatively and concurrently associated with 20‐month‐olds' vocabulary levels. These findings suggest an early interaction between infants' exposure to sound symbolic input and their vocabulary development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People are more disfluent in their second language (L2) than their first language (L1). Gesturing facilitates cognitive processes, including speech production. This study investigates speech disfluency and representational gesture production across Turkish-English bilinguals' L1 (Turkish) and L2 (English) through a narrative retelling task (N = 27). Results showed that people were more disfluent and used more representational gestures in English. Controlling for L2 proficiency, people were still more disfluent in English. The more people were proficient in L2, the more they used gestures in that language. Similarly, disfluency-gesture co-occurrences were more common in English. L2 proficiency was positively correlated with the likelihood of a disfluency being accompanied by a gesture. These findings suggest that gestures may not necessarily compensate for weak language skills. Rather, people might gesture during disfluent moments if they can detect their errors, suggesting a close link between representational gestures and language competency in benefiting from gestures when disfluent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A cross-category advantage in color memory has been consistently documented. • The neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying this effect are not yet clarified. • Cathodal tDCS of the left ATL disrupted cross-category advantage in color memory. • Our results point at the causal role of ATL in categorical color perception. • We provide support for a post-perceptual account of categorical color perception. The linguistic category-advantage in color perception refers to better discrimination performance for stimuli that belong to different categories (e.g., green vs. blue) than equidistant stimuli from the same category (e.g., blue). Despite the robust nature of category-advantage in color perception, the related cognitive and neural mechanisms are not fully understood. Some views attribute this effect to early alteration of visual processing of color while others attribute it to post-perceptual conceptual processing. The current study investigated the causal role of the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL), as a post-perceptual semantic hub, in categorical color perception. We modulated the activity of the left ATL via cathodal tDCS or sham stimulation (within-subject) while participants were discriminating between successive presentations of color patches. Without stimulation, we found a category-advantage effect in both accuracy and response times. The inhibition of left ATL eliminated the category-advantage effect in terms of RTs but not accuracies. Our results point at the causal role of ATL in categorical color perception and provide indirect support for a post-perceptual processing account of this robust phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examined the effects of observing different types of gestures on recalling path and event information. • Individual differences in children's working memory, language, and gesture use were assessed. • Observing iconic gestures at encoding phase facilitates recall for both adults and children. • Children with better expressive language abilities benefitted more from seeing iconic gestures. • Children's language skills could play a role in encoding specific information. This study examined (a) how observing different types of gestures while listening to a story affected the recall of path and event information in 5-year-old children (n = 71) and adults (n = 55) and (b) whether the effects of gesture type on children's recall of information were related to individual differences such as working memory, language abilities, spontaneous gesture use, and gesture production during the recall task. Participants were asked four questions to measure their spontaneous gesture frequency. They then listened to a story that included different path and event information. Depending on the assigned condition, participants listened to the story with the narrator producing iconic gestures (gestures having semantic meaning), beat gestures (rhythmic hand movements), or no gesture. We then asked participants to relate what happened in the story and administered a recognition task about the story. Children were given standardized tests to assess their language and working memory skills. Children and adults best recalled the story after observing iconic gestures as compared with children and adults presented with beat gestures or no gestures. Children who were exposed to iconic gestures during encoding better recalled event information than children in the other conditions. Children's language abilities, but not working memory, were related to their recall performance. More important, children with better expressive language abilities benefitted more from seeing iconic gestures. These results suggest that observing iconic gestures at encoding facilitates recall and that children's language skills could play a role in encoding and using specific information provided by gestures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Coding has been added to school curricula in several countries, being one of the necessary competencies of the 21st century. Although it has also been suggested to foster the development of several cognitive skills such as computational thinking and problem‐solving, studies on the effects of coding are very limited, provide mixed results, and lack causal evidence. Aim: This study aims to evaluate the impact of a learn‐to‐code programme on three cognitive skills in children: computational thinking, fluid intelligence, and spatial orientation, using a randomized trial. Sample: One hundred seventy‐four (n = 81 girls) 4th‐grade children participated in the study. Methods: Children were randomly assigned to one of the three 10‐week learning programmes: learn‐to‐code (treatment of interest), mathematics (another STEM‐related comparison treatment), and reading (control). Children responded to paper–pencil computational thinking, and spatial orientation measurements, and face‐to‐face matrix reasoning task at pre‐ and post‐tests. Results: Results showed that children's computational thinking scores increased significantly only in the learn‐to‐code condition. Fluid intelligence significantly increased in all conditions, possibly due to a practice effect. The spatial orientation did not improve in any of the conditions. Conclusion: These findings suggested that learning to code can be selectively beneficial for the development of computational thinking skills while not effective for spatial reasoning and fluid intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Object word learning can be based on infant‐related factors such as their manual actions and socio‐linguistic factors such as parental input. Specific input for spatial features (i.e., size, shape, features of objects) can be related to object word comprehension in early vocabulary development. In a longitudinal study, we investigated whether fine motor abilities at 14 months and parental input for spatial features at 19 months predicted object word comprehension at 25 months. Twenty‐seven Turkish‐learning children were tested at three time points (Time 1: Mage = 14.4 months, Time 2: Mage = 18.6 months, Time 3: Mage = 25 months). We measured word comprehension through the parental report and fine motor abilities with Mullen at Time 1. We used a puzzle play session to assess parental input for spatial features at Time 2 and a standardized receptive vocabulary test at Time 3. We found that fine motor abilities were related to object word comprehension. However, parental input for spatial features at 19 months predicted object word comprehension at 25 months beyond fine motor abilities at 14 months. Early fine motor abilities and using different words for spatial features may foster infants' visual experiences in play and exploration episodes, leading to better object word learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction is presented to the article "The cost of changing language context: The language-dependent recall of fictional stories" which appeared in April 13, 2023 issue.

[Display omitted] • We investigated 4-year-olds' causal reasoning about complex physical interactions. • As force configurations got more complex, predictions got less accurate. • Predictions were the least accurate with forces placed on two dimensions. • Estimating distance aggravated predictions, while estimating direction eased them. Reasoning about causal relations is essential for children's early cognitive development. The current study investigated 4-year-olds' (N = 58) reasoning about complex causal physical interactions in terms of predicting the endpoint of motion. In an online task, children were presented with four configurations that involved different interactions of forces and consequently different patterns of motion. These were Cause (one force moving an object), Enable (a secondary force promoting the motion), Prevent–180° (an opposing force hindering the motion), and Prevent–90° (two-dimensional; a perpendicular force altering the motion). Each prediction was made in terms of either the Distance or Direction of the motion, which was novel in this task compared with previous assessments. Results revealed differences between the configurations, with Cause being the easiest and Prevent–90° being the most difficult to predict. Furthermore, predictions were more accurate when options were about the motion's Direction, whereas Distance options may have aggravated reasoning. The current study extends previous findings on children's intuitive physics and causal cognition by showing that accuracy in reasoning not only is dependent on the number of forces and dimensions at work but also interacts with estimating the motion's Distance and Direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gestures help speakers and listeners during communication and thinking, particularly for visual-spatial information. Speakers tend to use gestures to complement the accompanying spoken deictic constructions, such as demonstratives, when communicating spatial information (e.g., saying "The candle is here" and gesturing to the right side to express that the candle is on the speaker's right). Visual information conveyed by gestures enhances listeners' comprehension. Whether and how listeners allocate overt visual attention to gestures in different speech contexts is mostly unknown. We asked if (a) listeners gazed at gestures more when they complement demonstratives in speech ("here") compared to when they express redundant information to speech (e.g., "right") and (b) gazing at gestures related to listeners' information uptake from those gestures. We demonstrated that listeners fixated gestures more when they expressed complementary than redundant information in the accompanying speech. Moreover, overt visual attention to gestures did not predict listeners' comprehension. These results suggest that the heightened communicative value of gestures as signaled by external cues, such as demonstratives, guides listeners' visual attention to gestures. However, overt visual attention does not seem to be necessary to extract the cued information from the multimodal message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with different hand preferences assign positive and negative emotions to different sides of their bodies and produce co-speech gestures with their dominant hand when the content is positive. In this study, we investigated this side preference by handedness in both gesture comprehension and production. Participants watched faceless gesture videos with negative and positive content on eye tracker and were asked to retell the stories after each video. Results indicated no difference in looking preferences regarding being right- or left-handed. Yet, an effect of emotional valence was observed. Participants spent more time looking to the right (actor's left) when the information was positive and to the left (actor's right) when the information was negative. Participants' retelling of stories revealed a handedness effect only for different types of gestures (representational vs beat). Individuals used their dominant hands for beat gestures. For representational gestures, while the right-handers used their right hands more, the left-handers gestured using both hands equally. Overall, the lack of significant difference between handedness and emotional content in both comprehension and production levels suggests that body-specific mental representations may not extend to the conversational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain damage is associated with linguistic deficits and might alter co-speech gesture production. Gesture production after focal brain injury has been mainly investigated with respect to intrasentential rather than discourse-level linguistic processing. In this study, we examined 1) spontaneous gesture production patterns of people with left hemisphere damage (LHD) or right hemisphere damage (RHD) in a narrative setting, 2) the neural structures associated with deviations in spontaneous gesture production in these groups, and 3) the relationship between spontaneous gesture production and discourse level linguistic processes (narrative complexity and evaluation competence). Individuals with LHD or RHD (17 people in each group) and neurotypical controls (n = 13) narrated a story from a picture book. Results showed that increase in gesture production for LHD individuals was associated with less complex narratives and lesions of individuals who produced more gestures than neurotypical individuals overlapped in frontal-temporal structures and basal ganglia. Co-speech gesture production of RHD individuals positively correlated with their evaluation competence in narrative. Lesions of RHD individuals who produced more gestures overlapped in the superior temporal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule. Overall, LHD individuals produced more gestures than neurotypical individuals. The groups did not differ in their use of different gesture forms except that LHD individuals produced more deictic gestures per utterance than RHD individuals and controls. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that co-speech gesture production interacts with macro-linguistic levels of discourse and this interaction is affected by the hemispheric lateralization of discourse abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]