Language 2 Embodied Cognition and Gestures

Question 1

Define embodiment approach

Answer 1

any cognitive processing might be influenced by our bodies (perceptual and motor systems, dependent on context you are currently in).

Question 2

What research areas has the embodied cognition framework been applied to ? Examples

Answer 2

Areas like memory, concepts, language, social psychology
Examples: mother/infant communication/gestures, teachers body movements in class, touching/smelling products before buying them
(all show that our bodies play a role in contexts where cognitive processing is needed.
Cognitive function is context-specific, all brain areas work together in a network

Question 3

Hand movements

Answer 3

used to build things, pick things up, for sign language, verbal communication (speech gestures).

Question 4

Gestures

Answer 4

Hand movements that form part of an act of communicating a message and encodes info relevant to a message

Question 5

Why are gestures important to study

Answer 5

1) enhances communication
2) changes speakers’ thoughts
3) reflects speakers thoughts
4) helps construction of language

Question 6

The different types of gestures

Answer 6

1) Iconic (illustrators, representational)- depicts actions, physical objects, movements
2) similar to iconic (but represents abstract concepts)
3) Deictic- pointing movements to indicate entities i.e . people, places (‘over there’)
4) Beat (batonic)- rhythmic vertical movements with no meaning
(could deffo be given an example of this in exam and asked to say which type of gesture it is)

Question 7

Why do we gesture? what are some of their communicative functions (helps enhance comms) ?

Answer 7

They are multi-functional- benefiting both the speaker and listener
Communicative functions-
1) we gesture more when listeners can see us than when visibility is blocked (i.e. phone call) i.e. gesture decreases with less visibility
2) listener able to obtain extra useful info from others gestures especially when it aids speech (i.e make hands smaller to suggests ‘its a tiny dog)
3) When listener is presented with the gesture-combination they gain a greater understanding of the original story - in order to then retell it as opposed to just being presented with speech alone

Question 8

Old study by Cohen (1977) - frequency of iconic gestures - Procedure and what was found?

Answer 8

P’s asked to describe a route from one point to another under different conditions (face to face, intercom, alone with tape recording)
The frequency of iconic gestures measured
Result- amount of iconic gestures when recipient could not see the participant decreased.
P’s did however still use gestures when alone or over intercom because it helps the speaker communicate too.

Question 9

What other study shows that gestures help benefit the speaker, not just the listener

Answer 9

Congenitally blind people (never seen gestures before) displayed gestures despite their lack of a visual model, even when speaking to a blind person

Question 10

What is a common gesture research method ?

Answer 10

1st- measure gesture frequency during different tasks

2nd- suppress hand movements, measure task performance

Question 11

What is the lexical gesture process model

Answer 11

Gestures help finding the word you want to communicate

Question 12

At what stage in the lexical gesture process model do gestures help?
What 2 hypotheses stand in this case?

Answer 12

The phonological encoding stage of speech formation - if the gestures share same semantic content as a word
Hypotheses-
1) speakers should produce more gestures when they are having problems with lexical access
2) preventing speakers from gesturing should make lexical access more problematic

Question 13

Support for the 2 hypotheses for gestures aiding lexical access

Answer 13

1) ToT state- more gestures are produced when a speaker tries to recall word forms than when they can easily retrieve narration
2) Gesturing helps us speak more fluently than when prohibited to gesture- could it be a cue to speech then?

Question 14

What is the information packaging hypothesis?

2 hypotheses for this then?

Answer 14

gestures help frame thoughts for language
Hypotheses-
1) speakers should produce more gestures when info is difficult to conceptualise
2) preventing speakers from gesturing should degrade performance in conceptualisation tasks

Question 15

Support for info packaging hypothesis

Answer 15

1) p’s asked to describe dotted shapes (one is harder than the other- unconnected dots)- more gestures were produced during description of the harder dot pattern
2) During a mental rotation task (on a computer)- encouraging p’s to gesture during it enhances their performance than when not encouraged to do so

Question 16

What is the image maintenance hypothesis?

What hypothesis can we then assume?

Answer 16

Gestures help maintain mental (spatial) images
Hypothesis- speakers should produce more gestures when the info to be described is absent and needs to be maintained in images

Question 17

Support for image maintenance hypothesis? (Wesp et al, 2001)

Answer 17

When p’s described pictures to a listener and the pictures were absent, they produced more gestures compared to when the pictures were visible

Question 18

What is the gesture-inlearning-and-development framework?

Hypothesis?

Answer 18

Gestures help reduce cognitive load
Hypothesise-
preventing speakers from gesturing should affect performance in dual tasks

Question 19

Support for the gesture-in-learning-and-development framework?

Answer 19

Gestures helped speakers to reduce working memory load during a math explanation problem and freed capacity to perform a secondary letter recall task. In some conditions they couldn’t gesture and so performing the equation was harder

Question 20

What are ‘uni-modal’ and ‘bi-modal’ gestures?

Answer 20

Uni- one handed gestures
Bi- two handed gestures
Both are produced in spontaneous natural conversation

Question 21

What is found in right/left handed people gesture-wise

Answer 21

RIght-handed- use left handed gestures more (since opposite side to brain area (used for handedness) is more dominant)

Question 22

Body-specificity hypothesis

Answer 22

Good side as dominant side
Study found- politicians gesture with their dominant hand more to convey positive messages and their less dominant hand for negative gestures

Question 23

Hand-specificity hypothesis

Answer 23

Right handers gesture more with the left than right hand when talking about metaphors.
They could also explain metaphors better when gesturing with their left hand compared to not gesturing. Not found for the right hand (in left handers) Evi’s research
Note- contra-lateral control of hands (i.e. right hemi controls left hand, right hemi particularly involved in metaphor processing) It could suggest left-handers are better at explaining metaphor?)

Question 24

Study- link between language and gesture development (Mumford & Kita, 2016)

Answer 24

10-12 months olds- if infants used right-hand more when pointing for wanting a toy suggests the infants receptive vocabulary is well developed.
There was a positive correlation between vocabulary range of child (according to mother) and how often the child points with right hand. suggests a link of language and gesture in child dev.

Question 25

Gestures have inter-cognitive (communicative) and intra-cognitive (self-oriented) functions. This is useful for aphasia therapy. What is aphasia?

Answer 25

impairment of language, affecting speech production and comprehension, ability to write/read

Question 26

The 2 types of aphasia

Answer 26

Wernicke’s aphasia (aka fluent aphasia)
- fluent but largely meaningless speech
- difficulty comprehending spoken/written input
Broca’s aphasia (aka non-fluent aphasia)
- meaningful but effortful speech largely free from grammatical structure

Question 27

Marangolo et al (2010) small scale study with aphasia patients- procedure and findings?
Research for use in aphasia therapy still in infancy

Answer 27

6 patients given 3 therapy sessions with 3 treatments compared (observe action/say verb, observe action/executive action/say verb, observe action/execute unrelated action/say verb. Then measured correct responses
Findings- no benefit to individuals with fluent aphasia. Significant benefit for action execution for those with non-fluent aphasia