Across the second and third years of life, children increasingly rely on word-learning cues to identify referents, retain new mappings over time, and extend words beyond their initial context. Existing studies provide mixed evidence for the benefits of iconic gesture, with intervention research reporting inconsistent vocabulary outcomes and small-scale experimental studies producing conflicting results for two- and three-year-old children. By adopting a controlled experimental design conducted in familiar nursery and educational environments, this project will isolate the specific contribution of iconic gestures to early noun learning.
Three initial experiments will examine: (One & Two) whether iconic gestures support 17-42-month-old children's map novel labels to referents in a referent selection and referent retention study; and (Three) whether iconic gestures support two to three-year-olds' generalisation of newly learned novel object names. Experiment One examined whether iconic gestures may support young children’s novel word learning and revealed a significant overall learning effect across the cohort. However, despite a robust main effect, there was no evidence of an age effect within the 2.5-3.5-year-old cohort. This suggests that this cohort is already proficient at integrating iconic gestures into the word-learning process, and that age-related variation within this cohort is minimal. Experiment Two demonstrated that children aged 18-27 months can successfully select referents in an iconic gesture-supported word-learning task. Still, they are not able to retain these mappings over time. These findings highlight a key developmental transition period in early word learning, during which children become more adept at establishing immediate associations but have not yet mastered the processes necessary for reliable retention. Experiment Three is yet to be completed at the time of this abstract submission. Together, these studies will generate comprehensive experimental evidence on the developmental timing and mechanisms through which iconic gestures support word learning.
