Completed projects
IkoGeWo – Iconic gestures as a method to effectively convey unknown words in inclusive settings
The aim of the project is to examine the use of gestures, with a high degree of iconicity, i.e., very pictorial gestures (iconic gestures), for teaching novel words in inclusive day-care facilities and primary schools. In particular, we examine the effect of gestures in children with difficulties in communication and language acquisition (developmental language delay, developmental language disorder, no or less knowledge of German).
The frequently expressed fear that the presentation of gestures or signs when learning novel words could hinder the acquisition of unknow words or the word learning process (c.f. Goodwyn, Acredolo & Brown, 2000) has now been clearly refuted (i.a. Capone & McGregor, 2005; Capone Singleton, 2012; Goodwyn et al., 2000; McGregor, Rohlfing, Bean & Marschner, 2009).
On the contrary, iconic gestures seem to act as a semantically enriched hint (Capone Singleton, 2012; Lüke & Ritterfeld, 2014), thus deepening the semantic representation of a novel word in the mental lexicon (c.f. Levelt, 1989), which has a positive effect on the acquisition process of the novel word.
Project term: 12/2018 – 02/2023
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Carina Lüke
Project collaborator: Nathalie Frey und Verena Frank
Project funding: The project / research is funded by the (German) Federal Ministry of Education and Research (01UL1811X)
Mottier Research Project
The „Mottier-Test“ (Mottier 1951) is used in German-speaking areas to examine the auditory processing span as much as the phonological working memory performance and is often part of diagnosing developmental language disorders. So far there are no standard values regarding mono- and multilingual children at the age of 3 to 4 years, and the standardisation of the Mottier-Test for this age group is the subject of a study conducted in Würzburg, Germany by the Professorial Chair of Speech and Language Pathology under Prof. Dr. Carina Lüke in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Anja Starke of the University of Bremen. Further methodical issues are being assessed in a collaboration with Maren R. Eikerling and Theresa Bloder.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Carina Lüke und Prof. Dr. Anja Starke
Project collaborator: Kathrin Heeg & Nathalie Frey
