Virginia Volterra
Biographic Data
| ID | 1692235 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Virginia Volterra |
| GIVEN NAMES | Virginia |
| FAMILY NAME | Volterra |
| SIGNATURE | VOLTERRA V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3018-9951 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Action depiction in gestures and signs: A comparative semiotic approach
The relation between gestures and signs is highly debated both in gestures and sign language studies. Addressing the common symbolic ground from which both gestures and signs arise could improve our general knowledge about the body’s role in meaning construction and in shaping communication. To effectively compare how signers and speakers employ their bodies to convey meanings, we investigated how actions are depicted in gestures and signs by col…
Deconstructing language development: A commentary on Karadöller, Sümer and Özyürek
Karadöller and colleagues propose an interesting analysis of multimodality in spoken and signed language acquisition. In this commentary, we aim to extend the authors’ approach and abandon speech-centred and brainbound perspectives. By considering multimodality as a collage of multiple skills, in which abilities are acquired and exploited with new purposes, we will avoid integrating gestures and signs into pre-existent speech-centred models. This…
Searching for the roots of signs in children’s early gestures
A consolidated tendency considers ‘gestures’ and ‘signs’ as distinct categories separated by a ‘cataclysmic break’. According to a different approach, gestures and signs have their common origin in actions, and are considered as part of language. The aim of this study was to compare the productions of preschool speaking hearing children and signing deaf children in response to the same visual stimuli. The execution parameters and representational…
The Italian Deaf Community at the Time of Coronavirus
The present paper will explore the impacts of the recent pandemic crisis on the Italian Deaf community, as a linguistic minority. Recent research has shown that minorities are suffering much more the effects of the pandemia because their lack of access to services and in a much wider perspective, to education and welfare. We will show that, during the COVID crisis, despite lockdown measures, various actions at the formal political level (from the…
Gestural symbolic strategies in children with Down syndrome
In early communicative development, children with Down syndrome (DS) make extensive use of gestures to compensate for articulatory difficulties. Here, we analyzed the symbolic strategies that underlie this gesture production, compared to that used by typically developing children. Using the same picture-naming task, 79 representational gestures produced by 10 children with DS and 42 representational gestures produced by 10 typically developing ch…
The representation of action in Italian Sign Language (LIS)
The present study investigates the types of verb and symbolic representational strategies used by 10 deaf signing adults and 13 deaf signing children who described in Italian Sign Language 45 video clips representing nine action types generally communicated by five general verbs in spoken Italian. General verbs, in which the same sign was produced to refer to several different physical action types, were rarely used by either group of participant…
Gestures and Words in Naming: Evidence From Crosslinguistic and Crosscultural Comparison
We report on an analysis of spontaneous gesture production in 2-year-old children who come from three countries (Italy, United Kingdom, Australia) and who speak two languages (Italian, English), in an attempt to tease apart the influence of language and culture when comparing children from different cultural and linguistic environments. Eighty-seven monolingual children aged 24-30 months completed an experimental task measuring their comprehensio…
Sign Language Skills Assessed Through a Sentence Reproduction Task
The aim of this study is to analyze Italian Sign Language (LIS) linguistic skills in two groups of deaf signing children at different ages, and to compare their skills with those of a group of deaf signing adults. For this purpose, we developed a new Sentence Reproduction Task (SRT) for Italian Sign Language (LIS-SRT), which we administered to 33 participants. Participants' scores and type of errors were analyzed to investigate similarities and d…
Language research and language community change: Italian Sign Language 1981-2013
By providing evidence that sign language is an autonomous language, research has contributed to various changes both within and beyond the signing communities. The aim of this article is to show an example of how sign language change is driven not only by language internal factors but also by changes in language perception, as well as in the changing groups of users and the contexts of use. Drawing from data collected at a sign language research …
Sign Vocabulary in Deaf Toddlers Exposed to Sign Language Since Birth
Lexical comprehension and production is directly evaluated for the first time in deaf signing children below the age of 3 years. A Picture Naming Task was administered to 8 deaf signing toddlers (aged 2-3 years) who were exposed to Sign Language since birth. Results were compared with data of hearing speaking controls. In both deaf and hearing children, comprehension was significantly higher than production. The deaf group provided a significantl…
A developmental study on children’s capacity to ascribe goals and intentions to others
The capacity to ascribe goals and intentions to others is a fundamental step in child cognitive development. The aim of the present study was to assess the age at which these capabilities are acquired in typically developing children. Two experiments were carried out. In the first experiment, 4 groups of children (age range = 3 years 2 months-7 years 11 months) were shown pictures representing hand-object interactions and asked what the individua…
Deaf Children Attending Different School Environments: Sign Language Abilities and Theory of Mind
The present study examined whether full access to sign language as a medium for instruction could influence performance in Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks. Three groups of Italian participants (age range: 6-14 years) participated in the study: Two groups of deaf signing children and one group of hearing-speaking children. The two groups of deaf children differed only in their school environment: One group attended a school with a teaching assistant (T…
Motoric characteristics of representational gestures produced by young children in a naming task
This study explores the form of representational gestures produced by forty-five hearing children (age range 2 ; 0–3 ; 1) asked to label pictures in words. Five pictures depicting objects and five pictures depicting actions which elicited more representational gestures were chosen for more detailed analysis. The range of gestures produced for each item varied from 3 to 27 for a total of 128 gestures. Gestures have been analyzed with the same para…
Learning to talk in a gesture-rich world: Early communication in Italian vs. American children
Italian children are immersed in a gesture-rich culture. Given the large gesture repertoire of Italian adults, young Italian children might be expected to develop a larger inventory of gestures than American children. If so, do these gestures impact the course of language learning? We examined gesture and speech production in Italian and US children between the onset of first words and the onset of two-word combinations. We found differences in t…
Gesture and speech: The emergence and development of a strong and changing partnership
The present paper focuses on early stages of development exploring the emergence of the gesture language system in infancy and its evolution toward the adult system. Old and recent studies carried on mainly in our Laboratory are described and discussed. According to the perspective that emerged in the late 1970s the findings on the role of gesture in the acquisition and development of language did not raise any particular interest in a wider audi…
Gestures and some key issues in the study of language development
The purpose of the current paper is to outline how gestures can contribute to the study of some key issues in language development. Specifically, we (1) briefly summarise what is already known about gesture in the domains of first and second language development, and development or changes over the life span more generally; (2) highlight theoretical and empirical issues in these domains where gestures can contribute in important ways to further o…
From action to language through gesture: A longitudinal perspective
The present study reports empirical longitudinal data on the early stages of language development. The main hypothesis is that the output systems of speech and gesture may draw on underlying brain mechanisms common to both language and motor functions. We analyze the spontaneous interaction with their parents of three typically-developing children (2 M, 1 F) videotaped monthly at home between 10 and 23 months of age. Data analyses focused on the …
From action to language through gesture: A longitudinal perspective
The present study reports empirical longitudinal data on the early stages of language development. The main hypothesis is that the output systems of speech and gesture may draw on underlying brain mechanisms common to both language and motor functions. We analyze the spontaneous interaction with their parents of three typically-developing children (2 M, 1 F) videotaped monthly at home between 10 and 23 months of age. Data analyses focused on the …
Gestures, signs, and words in early language development: G Estures , S Igns, and W Ords in E Arly L Anguage D Evelopment
Teaching Sign Language to Hearing Children as a Possible Factor in Cognitive Enhancement
We describe an educational experience designed to teach Italian Sign Language (LIS) to a group of hearing children. The hypothesis underlying this experience was that learning a visual-gestural language such as LIS may improve children's attentional abilities, visual discrimination, and spatial memory. To examine this hypothesis, we conducted two studies. The first involved an educational experience lasting two years with a group of hearing child…
Written Language Abilities in Deaf Italians
Written texts produced by 10 Italian deaf native signers in four different writing tasks were analyzed. Data analysis focused on linguistic and orthographic nonstandard forms. The written production of deaf subjects with deaf parents (DD) was compared to the written production in two control groups: a group of 10 hearing subjects with deaf parents (HD) and a group of 10 subjects who have had no contact with deaf people or sign language (HH). The …
Gestures and words during the transition to two-word speech
This study explores the communicative use of the gestural and vocal modalities by normally developing Italian children during the transition from one- to two-word speech. We analysed the spontaneous production of 12 children at 1;4 and at 1;8, focusing on the use of two-element combinations of words and/or gestures. Results indicated that use of gesture and gesture-word combinations during the transition to two-word speech is a robust feature of …
Toward mastery of Italian morphology: A cross-sectional study
The use of Italian morphology was examined in 34 children ranging in age from 2;6 to 5;0. By the age of 3;6–4;0, high percentages of use in obligatory contexts were seen for a number of grammatical morphemes. Children age 2;6–3;0 showed percentages of use that were somewhat lower than those seen for the older children. In this age range, singular forms were used with higher percentages in obligatory contexts than plural forms, for several differe…
A parent report instrument for early language assessment
A structured questionnaire for evaluating the level of communicative and linguistic development at 12, 16 and 20 months of age respectively was administered to the parents of 23 children for three different assessments. For a subsample of 14 subjects the questionnaire was filled in by the parents and by a trained observer in a two-hour observational session at home. The aim of the study was two-fold: (a) to verify the validity of the instrument a…
First Words in Language and Action: A Qualitative Look
Gesture and speech: The emergence and development of a strong and changing partnership
The present paper focuses on early stages of development exploring the emergence of the gesture language system in infancy and its evolution toward the adult system. Old and recent studies carried on mainly in our Laboratory are described and discussed. According to the perspective that emerged in the late 1970s the findings on the role of gesture in the acquisition and development of language did not raise any particular interest in a wider audi…
Gestures and some key issues in the study of language development
The purpose of the current paper is to outline how gestures can contribute to the study of some key issues in language development. Specifically, we (1) briefly summarise what is already known about gesture in the domains of first and second language development, and development or changes over the life span more generally; (2) highlight theoretical and empirical issues in these domains where gestures can contribute in important ways to further o…
From action to language through gesture: A longitudinal perspective
The present study reports empirical longitudinal data on the early stages of language development. The main hypothesis is that the output systems of speech and gesture may draw on underlying brain mechanisms common to both language and motor functions. We analyze the spontaneous interaction with their parents of three typically-developing children (2 M, 1 F) videotaped monthly at home between 10 and 23 months of age. Data analyses focused on the …
Gestural symbolic strategies in children with Down syndrome
In early communicative development, children with Down syndrome (DS) make extensive use of gestures to compensate for articulatory difficulties. Here, we analyzed the symbolic strategies that underlie this gesture production, compared to that used by typically developing children. Using the same picture-naming task, 79 representational gestures produced by 10 children with DS and 42 representational gestures produced by 10 typically developing ch…
The representation of action in Italian Sign Language (LIS)
The present study investigates the types of verb and symbolic representational strategies used by 10 deaf signing adults and 13 deaf signing children who described in Italian Sign Language 45 video clips representing nine action types generally communicated by five general verbs in spoken Italian. General verbs, in which the same sign was produced to refer to several different physical action types, were rarely used by either group of participant…
The acquisition and development of language by bilingual children
Analysing the gradual learning process through which a child becomes bilingual from early infancy, three stages can be distinguished: (1) the child has one lexical system which includes words from both languages; (2) the child distinguishes two different lexicons but applies the same syntactic rules to both languages; (3) the child has two linguistic codes, differentiated both in lexicon and in syntax, but each language is exclusively associated …
First Words in Language and Action: A Qualitative Look
Cognition and Communication From Nine to Thirteen Months: Correlational Findings
Relationships Between Cognition, Communication, and Quality of Attachment
A parent report instrument for early language assessment
A structured questionnaire for evaluating the level of communicative and linguistic development at 12, 16 and 20 months of age respectively was administered to the parents of 23 children for three different assessments. For a subsample of 14 subjects the questionnaire was filled in by the parents and by a trained observer in a two-hour observational session at home. The aim of the study was two-fold: (a) to verify the validity of the instrument a…
Toward mastery of Italian morphology: A cross-sectional study
The use of Italian morphology was examined in 34 children ranging in age from 2;6 to 5;0. By the age of 3;6–4;0, high percentages of use in obligatory contexts were seen for a number of grammatical morphemes. Children age 2;6–3;0 showed percentages of use that were somewhat lower than those seen for the older children. In this age range, singular forms were used with higher percentages in obligatory contexts than plural forms, for several differe…
Gestures and words during the transition to two-word speech
This study explores the communicative use of the gestural and vocal modalities by normally developing Italian children during the transition from one- to two-word speech. We analysed the spontaneous production of 12 children at 1;4 and at 1;8, focusing on the use of two-element combinations of words and/or gestures. Results indicated that use of gesture and gesture-word combinations during the transition to two-word speech is a robust feature of …
Gestures, signs, and words in early language development: G Estures , S Igns, and W Ords in E Arly L Anguage D Evelopment
Teaching Sign Language to Hearing Children as a Possible Factor in Cognitive Enhancement
We describe an educational experience designed to teach Italian Sign Language (LIS) to a group of hearing children. The hypothesis underlying this experience was that learning a visual-gestural language such as LIS may improve children's attentional abilities, visual discrimination, and spatial memory. To examine this hypothesis, we conducted two studies. The first involved an educational experience lasting two years with a group of hearing child…
Written Language Abilities in Deaf Italians
Written texts produced by 10 Italian deaf native signers in four different writing tasks were analyzed. Data analysis focused on linguistic and orthographic nonstandard forms. The written production of deaf subjects with deaf parents (DD) was compared to the written production in two control groups: a group of 10 hearing subjects with deaf parents (HD) and a group of 10 subjects who have had no contact with deaf people or sign language (HH). The …
From action to language through gesture: A longitudinal perspective
The present study reports empirical longitudinal data on the early stages of language development. The main hypothesis is that the output systems of speech and gesture may draw on underlying brain mechanisms common to both language and motor functions. We analyze the spontaneous interaction with their parents of three typically-developing children (2 M, 1 F) videotaped monthly at home between 10 and 23 months of age. Data analyses focused on the …
From action to language through gesture: A longitudinal perspective
The present study reports empirical longitudinal data on the early stages of language development. The main hypothesis is that the output systems of speech and gesture may draw on underlying brain mechanisms common to both language and motor functions. We analyze the spontaneous interaction with their parents of three typically-developing children (2 M, 1 F) videotaped monthly at home between 10 and 23 months of age. Data analyses focused on the …
Learning to talk in a gesture-rich world: Early communication in Italian vs. American children
Italian children are immersed in a gesture-rich culture. Given the large gesture repertoire of Italian adults, young Italian children might be expected to develop a larger inventory of gestures than American children. If so, do these gestures impact the course of language learning? We examined gesture and speech production in Italian and US children between the onset of first words and the onset of two-word combinations. We found differences in t…
Gesture and speech: The emergence and development of a strong and changing partnership
The present paper focuses on early stages of development exploring the emergence of the gesture language system in infancy and its evolution toward the adult system. Old and recent studies carried on mainly in our Laboratory are described and discussed. According to the perspective that emerged in the late 1970s the findings on the role of gesture in the acquisition and development of language did not raise any particular interest in a wider audi…
Gestures and some key issues in the study of language development
The purpose of the current paper is to outline how gestures can contribute to the study of some key issues in language development. Specifically, we (1) briefly summarise what is already known about gesture in the domains of first and second language development, and development or changes over the life span more generally; (2) highlight theoretical and empirical issues in these domains where gestures can contribute in important ways to further o…
Motoric characteristics of representational gestures produced by young children in a naming task
This study explores the form of representational gestures produced by forty-five hearing children (age range 2 ; 0–3 ; 1) asked to label pictures in words. Five pictures depicting objects and five pictures depicting actions which elicited more representational gestures were chosen for more detailed analysis. The range of gestures produced for each item varied from 3 to 27 for a total of 128 gestures. Gestures have been analyzed with the same para…
Deaf Children Attending Different School Environments: Sign Language Abilities and Theory of Mind
The present study examined whether full access to sign language as a medium for instruction could influence performance in Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks. Three groups of Italian participants (age range: 6-14 years) participated in the study: Two groups of deaf signing children and one group of hearing-speaking children. The two groups of deaf children differed only in their school environment: One group attended a school with a teaching assistant (T…
Sign Vocabulary in Deaf Toddlers Exposed to Sign Language Since Birth
Lexical comprehension and production is directly evaluated for the first time in deaf signing children below the age of 3 years. A Picture Naming Task was administered to 8 deaf signing toddlers (aged 2-3 years) who were exposed to Sign Language since birth. Results were compared with data of hearing speaking controls. In both deaf and hearing children, comprehension was significantly higher than production. The deaf group provided a significantl…
A developmental study on children’s capacity to ascribe goals and intentions to others
The capacity to ascribe goals and intentions to others is a fundamental step in child cognitive development. The aim of the present study was to assess the age at which these capabilities are acquired in typically developing children. Two experiments were carried out. In the first experiment, 4 groups of children (age range = 3 years 2 months-7 years 11 months) were shown pictures representing hand-object interactions and asked what the individua…
Language research and language community change: Italian Sign Language 1981-2013
By providing evidence that sign language is an autonomous language, research has contributed to various changes both within and beyond the signing communities. The aim of this article is to show an example of how sign language change is driven not only by language internal factors but also by changes in language perception, as well as in the changing groups of users and the contexts of use. Drawing from data collected at a sign language research …
Sign Language Skills Assessed Through a Sentence Reproduction Task
The aim of this study is to analyze Italian Sign Language (LIS) linguistic skills in two groups of deaf signing children at different ages, and to compare their skills with those of a group of deaf signing adults. For this purpose, we developed a new Sentence Reproduction Task (SRT) for Italian Sign Language (LIS-SRT), which we administered to 33 participants. Participants' scores and type of errors were analyzed to investigate similarities and d…
Gestures and Words in Naming: Evidence From Crosslinguistic and Crosscultural Comparison
We report on an analysis of spontaneous gesture production in 2-year-old children who come from three countries (Italy, United Kingdom, Australia) and who speak two languages (Italian, English), in an attempt to tease apart the influence of language and culture when comparing children from different cultural and linguistic environments. Eighty-seven monolingual children aged 24-30 months completed an experimental task measuring their comprehensio…
Gestural symbolic strategies in children with Down syndrome
In early communicative development, children with Down syndrome (DS) make extensive use of gestures to compensate for articulatory difficulties. Here, we analyzed the symbolic strategies that underlie this gesture production, compared to that used by typically developing children. Using the same picture-naming task, 79 representational gestures produced by 10 children with DS and 42 representational gestures produced by 10 typically developing ch…
The representation of action in Italian Sign Language (LIS)
The present study investigates the types of verb and symbolic representational strategies used by 10 deaf signing adults and 13 deaf signing children who described in Italian Sign Language 45 video clips representing nine action types generally communicated by five general verbs in spoken Italian. General verbs, in which the same sign was produced to refer to several different physical action types, were rarely used by either group of participant…
The Italian Deaf Community at the Time of Coronavirus
The present paper will explore the impacts of the recent pandemic crisis on the Italian Deaf community, as a linguistic minority. Recent research has shown that minorities are suffering much more the effects of the pandemia because their lack of access to services and in a much wider perspective, to education and welfare. We will show that, during the COVID crisis, despite lockdown measures, various actions at the formal political level (from the…
Psychology (26 works) · Hearing Impairment and Communication (21 works) · Linguistics (21 works) · Developmental psychology (13 works) · Hand Gesture Recognition Systems (13 works) · Gesture (12 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Sign language (10 works) · Artificial Intelligence (8 works)