Observing storytellers who use rhythmic beat gestures improves children’s narrative discourse performance.

Abstract

, in which focal elements were highlighted by beat gestures. After the training session, a posttest was administered following the same procedure as the pretest. Narrative structure scores were independently coded from recordings of the pretest and posttest and subjected to statistical comparisons. The results revealed that children who were exposed to the beat condition showed a higher gain in narrative structure scores. This study thus shows for the first time that a brief training session with beat gestures has immediate benefits for children's narrative discourse performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).