The integration of the visual-gestural modality in research on child language development: A commentary on Karadöller, Sümer and Özyürek

This commentary builds on Karadöller et al.’s endeavor to include gesture studies on the one hand and sign language studies on the other to highlight the crucial part played by the visual-gestural modality in child language development. While we acknowledge the invaluable contribution of their paper to research on multimodal language development, we question the authors’ phrasing of the relationship between gesture and language, as well as the selection of reviewed studies, arguing that it might narrow perspectives on methodologies, contexts, age groups, and cultural influences. We advocate for a deeper recognition of the parallels within visual-gestural modality across both sign and spoken (multimodal) languages.