Reduction in gesture during the production of repeated references

Publication date: February–April 2015 Source:Journal of Memory and Language, Volumes 79–80 Author(s): Marieke Hoetjes , Ruud Koolen , Martijn Goudbeek , Emiel Krahmer , Marc Swerts In dialogue, repeated references contain fewer words (which are also acoustically reduced) and fewer gestures than initial ones. In this paper, we describe three experiments studying to what extent gesture reduction is comparable to other forms of linguistic reduction. Since previous studies showed conflicting findings for gesture rate, we systematically compare two measures of gesture rate: gesture rate per word and per semantic attribute (Experiment I). In addition, we ask whether repetition impacts the form of gestures, by manual annotation of a number of features (Experiment I), by studying gradient differences using a judgment test (Experiment II), and by investigating how effective initial and repeated gestures are at communicating information (Experiment III). The results revealed no reduction in terms of gesture rate per word, but a U-shaped reduction pattern for gesture rate per attribute. Gesture annotation showed no reliable effects of repetition on gesture form, yet participants judged gestures from repeated references as less precise than those from initial ones. Despite this gradient reduction, gestures from initial and repeated references were equally successful in communicating information. Besides effects of repetition, we found systematic effects of visibility on gest...
Source: Journal of Memory and Language - Category: Speech Therapy Source Type: research