Children With Brain Lesions Able to Use Gestures Important to Language Learning, Georgia State University Study

Children with brain lesions suffered before or around the time of birth are able to use gestures -- an important aspect of the language learning process- to convey simple sentences, a Georgia State University researcher has found. Seyda Özçaliskan, assistant professor of psychology, and fellow researchers at the University of Chicago, looked at children who suffered lesions to one side of the brain to see whether they used gestures similar to typically developing children. She examined gestures such as pointing to a cookie while saying "eat" to convey the meaning "eat cookie," several months before expressing such sentences exclusively in speech