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Gesture - Online First
Online First articles are the published Version of Record, made available as soon as they are finalized and formatted. They are in general accessible to current subscribers, until they have been included in an issue, which is accessible to subscribers to the relevant volume
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Higher empathy predicts more manual pointing in Tibetan people
Author(s): Heng LiAvailable online: 26 May 2025More LessAbstractPrevious research has suggested a link between levels of empathic engagement and the frequency and saliency of certain gestural forms, notably conduit and palm-revealing gestures. The present research investigates if these patterns are also observable in the use of pointing gestures within Tibetan communities, an underrepresented population in linguistics and cognitive science studies. To address this query, we implemented a referential communication task to elicit pointing behavior. This paradigm required participants to harness a repertoire of pointing techniques in order to facilitate the accurate assembly of intricate toy block configurations. The results showed that like many other cultural populations, Tibetan participants showed an overall preference for manual over non-manual pointing gestures at least within a controlled laboratory environment. However, Tibetan participants with higher levels of empathy produced manual pointing more often compared to those with low empathy. Notably, the two groups showed no difference in the mean number of non-manual pointing. These findings underscore the significance of integrating individual differences in investigating pointing preferences and, more broadly, enhance our understanding of the predictors of gesture use in human communication.
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Task effects in Farsi-English bilinguals’ use of gestures
Author(s): Samira Khodadadi, Elena Nicoladis, Anahita Shokrkon and Shiva ZarezadehkheibariAvailable online: 01 April 2025More LessAbstractThe primary purpose of this study was to test whether there were task differences (storytelling vs. language learning history) in gesture frequency among Farsi-English bilinguals. Given the importance of visuospatial processing for representational gestures, we predicted that participants would produce more representational gestures when telling a story than when recounting their language learning history (i.e., how they learned English as second language), and no task differences in beat production. A secondary purpose of this study was to test if there were differences in gesture production by language. We predicted that the participants would use more representational and beat gestures in their second language (English) than in Farsi. As predicted, the participants used more representational gestures in story-telling than when talking about their language history in both languages and more beats when speaking English than Farsi. Surprisingly, they used equivalent rates of representational gestures in both languages. We discuss these results in terms of the different functions of representational gestures and beat gestures.
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Gesture in contexts of verbal negation in Chinese
Author(s): Suwei Wu, Alan Cienki and Yaoyao ChenAvailable online: 06 February 2025More LessAbstractEast Asian languages and cultures are known to show substantial differences from European ones, including in terms of how negation is expressed. The present study considers how gestures relate to the expression of verbal negation by speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Based on around 400 minutes of Chinese TV programs, we establish some relatively stable gestural form-meaning mappings associated with verbal negation. For instance, holding away gestures tend to express rejection, and wigwagging gestures tend to express denial. Our analyses of these gestural correlations with verbal negation provide insights into the multifunctionality of negative verbal clauses when viewed from a multimodal perspective.
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Infants can create iconic gestures during natural interactions with caregivers
Author(s): Kirsty R. Green, Chloe Osei-Cobbina, Marcus Perlman and Sotaro KitaAvailable online: 09 January 2025More LessAbstractAdults across cultures produce iconic gestures, but little is known about the emergence of iconic gesturing in infants. This study aimed to identify plausible instances of infants’ earliest iconic gestures to learn more about their form and the interactional contexts in which they emerge. We identified the first 10 iconic gestures produced by five English-speaking children in a naturalistic longitudinal video corpus. In identifying gestures, we cast a wide net that included gestures produced during pretend play and those performed with objects in-hand. Analyses of gestures’ form and context show that children produced their first iconic gesture between 12 and 20 months, the great majority of which depicted actions. We found mixed evidence suggesting that children may produce conceptually less-challenging gestures earlier. Infants produced more object-in-hand gestures than empty-hand gestures to depict transitive actions but also more imagined-object than body-part-as-object gestures. Most gestures were produced independently of adult models, and many demonstrated innovation. Overall, within natural interactions, infants demonstrated impressive representational abilities and did not always rely on parental scaffolding. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the interactional context when conducting research on the development of gesture.
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Home position
Author(s): Harvey Sacks and Emanuel A. Schegloff
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Depicting by gesture
Author(s): Jürgen Streeck
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Some uses of the head shake
Author(s): Adam Kendon
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