Lecture 3 Notes: Gesture

Gestures in Communication

The Mutual Knowledge Problem

  • Mutual knowledge is when all parties are aware that a specific event has occurred.

  • The mutual knowledge problem arises when individuals are not necessarily cognizant of each other's knowledge.

  • Communication is essential to transform an event involving two or more people into a shared experience.

Review of Social and Emotional Development

Topics Covered:

  • Emotional Expressions

  • Imitation

  • Proto conversations

  • Social expectations

  • Voice and face preferences

  • Mini quiz

Learning outcomes include understanding:

  • The inherently social nature of babies and the reasons behind infants' predisposition to social interaction.

  • How adults are naturally responsive to infants.

Readings: Chapters 7 (pages 216-230) & 6 (185-197)

Gesture and Communication

Topics to be covered:

  • Defining 'gesture'

  • The development of gesture

  • The functions of gesture

  • Gesture and language milestones

  • Babies and sign language

  • Wrap-up quiz

Learning outcomes include understanding:

  • The functions of gesture.

  • Gesture throughout development.

Readings: Chapter 7 (pages 232-241)

Warm-up Task

  1. Describe how you cooked your dinner last night.

  2. Describe how you get from here to Costa in Roger Kirk in 2 minutes.

Why We Gesture

  • To reduce anxiety.

  • To aid the listener's comprehension.

  • To facilitate our own thinking process.

  • To strengthen the connection between the speaker and the listener.

Gesture

  • Gesture is a universal feature of human communication.

  • Gestures are produced by speakers in every culture we know of.

  • We gesture even when a visible communicative partner is not present.

  • Even blind speakers gesture while talking to blind listeners.

  • It’s often taken for granted

Nicaraguan Sign Language

Nicaraguan deaf students spontaneously created a language together demonstrating a pidgin evolving into a creole and then a full language. This provides evidence of an innate connection between gestures and language.

Getting a Grip on Gesture

  • Primates are adept with their hands.

  • Koko the sign-language gorilla understood more than 1000 signs and was thought to understand ~3000 spoken words.

  • The ‘Gossip and Grooming’ hypothesis (Dunbar, 1996) suggests pressure for more efficient communication (speech).

  • Gestural Theory posits that human language developed from gestures (Gillespie-Lynch et al. 2013) – the initial means of communication

Operationalizing Terms in Psychology

  • Operationalization means converting abstract concepts into measurable observations.

  • This process reduces subjectivity and enhances reliability.

  • Some observations, such as height, are easy to measure.

  • Some observations, such as intelligence, are far harder.

  • First, we need to identify what we are interested in.

Emblems

  • Emblems are specific gestures with specific meanings that are consciously used and understood.

  • Some emblems are culturally specific and independent of speech context.

  • They adhere to a ‘standard of form’.

  • Emblems are widely used in European countries, including France and Italy (Kendon, 1995).

Sign Language

Sign language vocabulary (examples given include words like above, bad, breakfast, etc.).

Ostensive Gestures

  • Ostensive gestures involve using a gesture, such as holding or touching an object, to direct another person's attention to it.

  • They are considered the first gestures that children produce to communicate, control behavior, and understand the world around them.

Gesture Types

  • Deictic (pointing) gestures

  • Iconic (semantic) gestures

  • Metaphoric gestures

Gestures can mislead in child interviews (Broaders and Goldin-Meadow, 2010).

Iconic Gesture Types

  • Iconic gestures

  • Metaphoric gestures

McNeill (1992) operationalized aspects of gesture. Example given: 2+9+4 = _ + 4 for maths and/or spelling, representing abstract ideas.

Beat Gestures

  • Rhythmic hand movements that occur in time with speech.

  • Example: Tony Blair's "Education, education, education."

Precursors to Communication

  • Infant communication may begin unintentionally, but infants learn response associations.

  • Example: An infant reaches for something, the mother interprets it as a signal, and gives the infant the item. Through repeated experience, the infant learns that this gesture elicits a certain response.

  • Parents' inferences about a child's desires shape their ability to communicate.

  • Implications? Vygotsky (1978).

Speech and Gesture

Speech and gesture are tightly coupled.

Gesture and Verbal Milestones at 6 Months

  • Verbal milestones include babbling.

  • Gesture milestones include 75% co-occurrence with rhythmic manual activity (Ejiri, 1998).

Hand Babbling

Observed by Petitto & Marantette, 1991; Petitto et al, 2001 in children raised by deaf parents.

Gesture and Verbal Milestones at 8-10 Months

  • Verbal milestones include word comprehension (8-10m).

  • Gesture milestones include deictic gestures and culturally derived gesture routines.

Word Comprehension and Pointing

  • Between 8 - 10 months, typically developing children start to show systematic evidence of word comprehension (Iverson et al. 2005).

  • Communicative, Developmental Inventory (CDI) - a measure of infant vocabulary.

  • This milestone is correlated with the onset of deictic gestures (pointing) and ‘culturally derived’ routines (e.g. waving goodbye).

Gestures and Cooperation

Examples of cooperation tasks such as the Tube with Handles and Double Tube (Warneken, Chen & Tomasello, 2006).

Functional Pointing

  • Imperative: to get the adult to 'do' something (e.g., "Juice!").

  • Declarative: to get the adult to 'know' something (e.g., "Kitty!").

Pointing to Share Mental States

  • Liszkowski et al., (2007) explored declarative pointing using a range of toys.

  • Adults expressed interest or disinterest.

  • When the adult expressed disinterest, infants did not prolong or repeat their pointing, indicating an understanding that the adult did not share their enthusiasm.

Awareness of Other’s Knowledge

Liszkowski et al. (2004) studied 12-month-old babies shown a puppet behind a screen, manipulating the experimenter’s reaction:

  1. Looking back and forth to puppet and infant with enthusiasm

  2. Ignoring puppet but smiling and being enthusiastic to infant

  3. Just looking at the puppet

  4. Ignoring the infant’s point

Pointing to Help Others

  • Liszkowski et al., (2009) explored other functions of early perspective-taking at 12 and 18 months.

  • Adults dropped different objects in the infant's vicinity.

  • The amount of pointing was measured during ‘active’ and ‘passive’ trials.

  • Infants point to help the adult look for objects.

What Pointing Tells Us About Infants

  • They want others to do things: imperatives or requestives (either more individualistic or more co-operative) for asking others to help them in attaining goals.

  • They want others to feel things: expressive declaratives for sharing emotions and attitudes about things.

  • They want others to know things: informative declaratives for helping others by providing them with needed or desirable information.

Coding Task: Imperative vs. Declarative

Examples of coding exercises differentiating between imperative and declarative pointing based on infant behavior and context.

Three Month Lag

  • Verbal milestones include the emergence of first words.

  • Gesture milestones include deictic gestures.

  • There is approximately a 3-month lag between the development of deictic gestures and the appearance of first words.

Gesture Speech Combinations

  • Complementary: Gesture and speech provide different but related information.

  • Supplementary: Gesture and speech provide the same information.

Examples: "Bag!" (reaching for a bag), "Gone!" (waving goodbye).

Milestones: Gesture and Speech

  • Complementary combinations

    • One-word stage: 11m+

    • Two-word stage: ~18-24m

    • Latency ~4.7 months

  • Supplementary combinations

    • Latency ~2.3 months

Cultural Differences: America vs. Italy

  • American children produced very few symbolic gestures compared to their high production of pointing gestures.

  • Italian children produced as many symbolic gestures as pointing gestures.

  • Symbolic gestures of American children were typically conventional (e.g., No, All-Gone).

  • Gestures of the Italian children were more varied including: Objects (wiggling nose for RABBIT), Actions (empty hand to mouth for EAT), and Characteristics.

Verbal and Gesture Milestones Around 12 Months

  • Verbal milestones include the emergence of first words.

  • Gesture milestones include symbolic gestures and increasing sophistication in play.

Enactive Naming

  • Around 12 months, infants begin to produce actions carried out on objects, e.g., holding a phone to their ear, drinking from an empty cup.

  • This type of play is argued to have ‘enactive naming’ for things (Escalona, 1973).

  • They demonstrate infants’ capacity for symbolic representation and are the beginnings of symbolic play (Inhelder et al 1971).

Baby Sign

Being skeptical tutorial of claims. The plural of anecdote is not data. >90% of supporting citations were opinion articles (Johnston et al. 2005).

Closing Quiz Summary

  • Gestures are maybe not what you think.

  • Speech and gesture are tightly coupled: gesture signals oncoming advances in speech.

  • Gesture provides insight into the mind of the infant – we seek shared experiences.

  • Be skeptical of claims.

Coding Task Answers

Examples of coding exercises differentiating between imperative and declarative pointing based on infant behavior and context, with answers provided.