Do young children show early sensitivity to viewpoint in iconic gestures?

Iconic gestures convey substantive information not found in speech by expressing actions or attributes associated with objects. An earlier study with adult speakers (Beattie & Shovelton, 2002) showed that adult speakers are particularly good at gleaning information from iconic gestures that use a character viewpoint (CVP; e.g., “It goes like this”+flapping arms to convey BIRD FLYING)—gestures that blend the gesturer’s body into the gesture space, compared to ones using observer viewpoint (OVP; e.g., “It goes like this”+peace sign with right hand moving up and down to convey RABBIT HOPPING) that do not blend the gesturer’s body into the gesture space. Here, we ask if iconic gestures with CVP are easier to understand when children are just beginning to produce such iconic gestures.