Can children detect conceptual information conveyed through other children's nonverbal behaviors?

Research suggests that children produce nonverbal behaviors when interacting with adults and peers. This study investigates how well other children can detect 1 specific type of nonverbal behavior: representational gestures. Eighteen children (12 Caucasian girls and 6 Caucasian boys; M = 7 years, 11 months) watched videotaped stimuli of children verbally and gesturally explaining a conceptual problem. Multiple methods were used to assess whether children could detect information conveyed through the stimulus children's speech and gesture. Results show that these multiple methods converge to demonstrate that children attend not only to other children's speech but also to their gestures. Implications of nonverbal detection for peer interactions and cognitive development are discussed.