Can gestures communicate the time of described events? The perception of temporal gestures executed by a companion robot

• Published in: Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics Vol. 10; no. 2; pp. 100 - 116
• Main Authors: Kotov, Artemiy A., Zinina, Anna A., Arinkin, Nikita A., Berkuta, Daria V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 28.06.2024
• ISSN: 2313-8912; 2313-8912
• DOI: 10.18413/2313-8912-2024-10-2-0-5

In this paper, we investigate whether temporal gestures indicating different events in time can convey information about the relative timing of these events. We depart from the assertion, that in many cultures time is metaphorically represented as an axis, oriented from left to right, i.e. recent or future events have rightmost position, as compared to the events of the past. We test the hypothesis that temporal gestures, referring to the events on the axis, may communicate to the addressee the temporal reference of the described events. The hypothesis was tested in an experiment (N = 22 people, average age 21.6 years, 17 female) where two companion robots told stories, accompanied by left-oriented, symmetric or right oriented gestures. Each story included events from two different cases – recent and past, and each statement was accompanied by (a) left-oriented or symmetric gesture (first condition), or (b) right-oriented or symmetric gesture (second condition). The task of the subjects was to correlate the described events with time, assigning each statement with recent or past event. As a result of this study, the hypothesis that the orientation of temporal gestures can communicate the time of the designated events was partially confirmed. The results correspond to the concept of time oriented for the narrator from left to right, where the events of the past are in the center, and later events (recent events, or ‘today’) are located on the right. This conceptual orientation in the experiment was interpreted by the human listeners, although from their point of view, “recent events” are located on the left side of the metaphoric axis.