A Systematic Investigation of Gesture Kinematics in Evolving Manual Languages in the Lab

Autor/inn/en	Pouw, Wim; Dingemanse, Mark; Motamedi, Yasamin; Özyürek, Asli
Titel	A Systematic Investigation of Gesture Kinematics in Evolving Manual Languages in the Lab
Quelle	In: Cognitive Science, 45 (2021) 7, (29 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Pouw, Wim)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1551-6709
DOI	10.1111/cogs.13014
Schlagwörter	Nonverbal Communication; Motion; Human Body; Sign Language; Efficiency; Semantics; Dialects + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Non-verbal communication; Nonverbale Kommunikation; Bewegungsablauf; Menschlicher Körper; Gebärdensprache; Effectiveness; Effektivität; Wirkungsgrad; Semantik; Dialect; Dialekt
Abstract	Silent gestures consist of complex multi-articulatory movements but are now primarily studied through categorical coding of the referential gesture content. The relation of categorical linguistic content with continuous kinematics is therefore poorly understood. Here, we reanalyzed the video data from a gestural evolution experiment (Motamedi, Schouwstra, Smith, Culbertson, & Kirby, 2019), which showed increases in the systematicity of gesture content over time. We applied computer vision techniques to quantify the kinematics of the original data. Our kinematic analyses demonstrated that gestures become more efficient and less complex in their kinematics over generations of learners. We further detect the systematicity of gesture form on the level of the gesture kinematic interrelations, which directly scales with the systematicity obtained on semantic coding of the gestures. Thus, from continuous kinematics alone, we can tap into linguistic aspects that were previously only approachable through categorical coding of meaning. Finally, going beyond issues of systematicity, we show how unique gesture kinematic dialects emerged over generations as isolated chains of participants gradually diverged over iterations from other chains. We, thereby, conclude that gestures can come to embody the linguistic system at the level of interrelationships between communicative tokens, which should calibrate our theories about form and linguistic content. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01