Abstract

The purpose of this study is threefold: First, it examines the effects of adult hand gestures on the narration of children with learning disabilities. Second, it explores whether children model adult gestures in their story narration, and if so, what the long-term effect of adult gesture input is on children’s narrative production. Third, it investigates whether boys and girls are equally susceptible to adult gestural input. Forty 7-year-old children who have learning disabilities participated in the study. They were asked to retell a story after listening to it under two different reading conditions: without and with hand gestures. The results suggest that all children showed an immediate improvement in their narrative production when the story was read with hand gestures, as evidenced in their increase in idea units (both in speech and gesture), words (including types of words), gestures (including types of gestures), and recollection of details about the story. However, only the children who modeled the adult’s gestures, recast them into their narratives, and produced more speech-gesture mismatches retained the benefits of the adult gesture input 4 weeks later. In addition, boys benefited more from adult gesture input than girls. In light of this study, several teaching strategies are recommended.