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In:Language in Interaction: Studies in honor of Eve V. Clark
Edited by Inbal Arnon, Marisa Casillas, Chigusa Kurumada and Bruno Estigarribia
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 12] 2014
► pp. 117–138

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Temporal synchrony in early multi-modal communication

 | University of Melbourne
Published online: 17 July 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.12.11kel
Children’s early gesture and speech combinations are typically asynchronous. As children develop the ability to employ speech and gesture together more regularly, the two modalities become synchronized and the word indicates one element, while the target of the gesture indicates another element. This chapter presents a longitudinal qualitative analysis of the path by which children develop the skill of temporal coordination in their gesture and spoken word communications. It investigates how this temporally coordinated information is taken up by the caregiver and examines synchrony of gesture and speech indexing the same element, in order to determine how this fits within the child’s transition to reaching the stage of multi-element communications.
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Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Clark, Eve V. & Alan Rumsey
2025. Barbara F. Kelly and the study of children’s multimodal language socialization. Australian Journal of Linguistics 45:3 ► pp. 275 ff. DOI logo
Gawne, Lauren
2025. Gesture, DOI logo
O’Shannessy, Carmel, Jennifer Green, Vanessa Davis, Jessie Bartlett, Alice Nelson, Ashleigh Jones & Denise Foster
2025. Multimodal strategies for engaging young Arrernte and Warlpiri children in storytelling and play. Australian Journal of Linguistics 45:3 ► pp. 289 ff. DOI logo
Tieu, Lyn, Jimmy L Qiu, Vaishnavy Puvipalan & Robert Pasternak
2025. Experimental evidence for a semantic typology of emoji: Inferences of co-, pro-, and post-text emoji. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 78:4 ► pp. 808 ff. DOI logo
Clark, Eve V.
2017. Becoming social and interactive with language. In Social Environment and Cognition in Language Development [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 21], ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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