Fifteen ways of looking at a pointing gesture

Cooperrider, Kensy

doi:10.31234/osf.io/2vxft

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 135 publications

(172 reference statements)

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“…Taken together, it seems that similar factors (e.g., the relative location of a referent, its visibility, and its presumed cognitive status in the mind of the addressee) shape a speaker's choice of demonstrative form as well as the form and kinematics of their pointing gesture. Similar top-down factors (language characteristics, speaker characteristics, and context affordances) may furthermore influence which of these cognitive factors play a more important role in shaping the form and kinematics of a pointing gesture in a given context (Cooperrider, 2020;Kita, 2003). Language communities differ ('language characteristics') in the overall proportion of use of specific articulators (hand, nose, chin, etc.)…”

Section: Beyond Demonstratives: the Form And Kinematics Of Pointing Gmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Addressees may use the vector created by the speaker's gesture, available gaze cues, and any concomitant verbal description to establish joint attention to the inferred, intended referent (Bangerter, 2004;H. H. Clark, 2020;Cooperrider, 2020;Diessel, 2006;Eco, 1976;Kita, 2003;Levinson, 2004), subsequently verbally and nonverbally signaling their understanding to the speaker (H. H. Clark & Krych, 2004). As such, referring can be considered both a social and a multimodal hallmark of human communication (Peeters & Özyürek, 2016).…”

Section: Introduction: Demonstrative Reference As a Joint Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

2020

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Language allows us to efficiently communicate about the things in the world around us. Seemingly simple words like this and that are a cornerstone of our capability to refer, as they contribute to guiding the attention of our addressee to the specific entity we are talking about. Such demonstratives are acquired early in life, ubiquitous in everyday talk, often closely tied to our gestural communicative abilities, and present in all spoken languages of the world. Based on a review of recent experimental work, here we introduce a new conceptual framework of demonstrative reference. In the context of this framework, we argue that several physical, psychological, and referent-intrinsic factors dynamically interact to influence whether a speaker will use one demonstrative form (e.g., this) or another (e.g., that) in a given setting. However, the relative influence of these factors themselves is argued to be a function of the cultural language setting at hand, the theory-of-mind capacities of the speaker, and the affordances of the specific context in which the speech event takes place. It is demonstrated that the framework has the potential to reconcile findings in the literature that previously seemed irreconcilable. We show that the framework may to a large extent generalize to instances of endophoric reference (e.g., anaphora) and speculate that it may also describe the specific form and kinematics a speaker’s pointing gesture takes. Testable predictions and novel research questions derived from the framework are presented and discussed.

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Section: Beyond Demonstratives: the Form And Kinematics Of Pointing Gmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction: Demonstrative Reference As a Joint Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

2020

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“…Her observations and analyses support a very clear impact of child-directed language on children's use of pointing, but also show that the distinction between gestures and signs are not clear-cut. Speakers also use pointing gestures toward objects, persons, or activities, but signers' points seem to be more rigidly conventionalized and thus appear to be "more word-like" (Cooperrider, 2020;Fenlon et al, 2019). These debates indicate that detailed analyses of the different types of pointing used both by hearing and deaf children and their functions in context are still needed to capture whether there are continuities or discontinuities between pointing gestures and signs.…”

Section: Role Of the Inputmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In most studies, it is considered a uniquely human mode of joint-attentional behavior (Povinelli et al, 2003;Tomasello, 2006). But, as summarized by Cooperrider (2020), this claim has been challenged. Field observations of bonobos in Zaire describes them as pointing (Veà & Sabater-Pi, 1998).…”

Section: Early Pointing and Language Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early pointing gestures.

Morgenstern¹

2022

Gesture in Language: Development Across the Lifespan.

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Not only is pointing abundantly used with a variety of functions across the globe in different cultures by adults, but it is one of the first gestures that enters children's productive repertoire (see Figure 3.1), often preceding first recognizable spoken words (Carpenter et al., 1998). It is considered a developmental cognitive and social milestone, as well as one of the first forms of communication used as humankind developed and thus a basic tool for cooperation (see Figure 3 .2;Tomasello, 2008).Despite being regarded as the simplest, most primary form of communicative action (Wundt, 1912) because of its phylogenetic and ontogenetic role as a precursor to human language, pointing is a fascinating, rich semiotic process that is resourcefully used long after children have mastered the complexities of language.In most parts of the world, pointing pervades all types of conversations (see Cooperrider & Mesh, Chapter 2, this volume) as an unmatched tool for orienting attention (Peirce, 1897/1932), as is well epitomized in several art forms. 1 As pointed out by Cooperrider (2020), Pointing may also be seen as a semiotic primitive, a philosophical puzzle, a communicative workhorse, a protean universal, a social tool, a widespread taboo, a partner of language, a part of language, a fixture of art, a graphical icon, a cognitive prop, a developmental milestone, a diagnostic window, a cross-species litmus test, and an evolutionary stepping-stone. (p. 1)Pointing can be described as the first communicative gesture or a gesture used to complement speech, a symbolic resource of its own, or incorporated into sign languages in a grammaticalized form and used, for example, as the equivalent of demonstrative or personal pronouns. 2 There have been descriptions of its various functions in child development and ongoing debates about its being separate from (Petitto, 1992) or part of (Haviland, 1998) language, of its being a ritualized extension of natural reaching movements (Vygotsky, 1934(Vygotsky, /1985, or a highly conventionalized form of expression that needs to be learned (Wittgenstein, 1953(Wittgenstein, /1958.In this chapter, I do not reduce the abundant literature on this multifaceted process to a few pages (but see Cooperrider, 2020, for a beautiful panorama), nor do I give definite answers to all the ongoing debates. Rather, by adopting a usage-based, functional approach, I focus on the emergence and uses of pointing in child-adult

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“…Bosker & Peeters 5 [19][20][21] . We manually point at things to guide the attention of our addressee to relevant aspects of our immediate environment [22][23][24][25] , enrich our speech with iconic gestures that in handshape and movement resemble what we are talking about [26][27][28] , and produce simple flicks of the hand aligned to the acoustic prominence of our spoken utterance to highlight relevant points in speech [29][30][31][32][33][34] . Over the past decades, it has become clear that such co-speech manual gestures are semantically aligned and temporally synchronized with the speech we produce 35-40 . It is an open question, however, whether the temporal synchrony between these hand gestures and the speech signal can actually influence which speech sounds we hear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beat gestures influence which speech sounds you hear

Bosker

Peeters

2020

Preprint

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Beat gestures – spontaneously produced biphasic movements of the hand – are among the most frequently encountered co-speech gestures in human communication. They are closely temporally aligned to the prosodic characteristics of the speech signal, typically occurring on lexically stressed syllables. Despite their prevalence across speakers of the world’s languages, how beat gestures impact spoken word recognition is unclear. Can these simple ‘flicks of the hand’ influence speech perception? Across six experiments, we demonstrate that beat gestures influence the explicit and implicit perception of lexical stress (e.g., distinguishing OBject from obJECT), and in turn, can influence what vowels listeners hear. Thus, we provide converging evidence for a manual McGurk effect: even the simplest ‘flicks of the hands’ influence which speech sounds we hear.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTBeat gestures are very common in human face-to-face communication. Yet we know little about their behavioral consequences for spoken language comprehension. We demonstrate that beat gestures influence the explicit and implicit perception of lexical stress, and, in turn, can even shape what vowels we think we hear. This demonstration of a manual McGurk effect provides some of the first empirical support for a recent multimodal, situated psycholinguistic framework of human communication, while challenging current models of spoken word recognition that do not yet incorporate multimodal prosody. Moreover, it has the potential to enrich human-computer interaction and improve multimodal speech recognition systems.

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Fifteen ways of looking at a pointing gesture

Cited by 10 publications

References 135 publications

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

Early pointing gestures.

Beat gestures influence which speech sounds you hear

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