Creating a communication system from scratch: gesture beats vocalization hands down

How does modality affect people's ability to create a communication system from scratch? The present study experimentally tests this question by having pairs of participants communicate a range of pre-specified items (emotions, actions, objects) over a series of trials to a partner using either...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFrontiers in psychology Vol. 5; p. 354
Main Authors Fay, Nicolas, Lister, Casey J, Ellison, T Mark, Goldin-Meadow, Susan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 29.04.2014
Subjects
Alignment
embodiment
Gesture
multimodal
Psychology
signs
vocalization
signs
vocalization
multimodal
embodiment
alignment
language origin
gesture
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Summary:How does modality affect people's ability to create a communication system from scratch? The present study experimentally tests this question by having pairs of participants communicate a range of pre-specified items (emotions, actions, objects) over a series of trials to a partner using either non-linguistic vocalization, gesture or a combination of the two. Gesture-alone outperformed vocalization-alone, both in terms of successful communication and in terms of the creation of an inventory of sign-meaning mappings shared within a dyad (i.e., sign alignment). Combining vocalization with gesture did not improve performance beyond gesture-alone. In fact, for action items, gesture-alone was a more successful means of communication than the combined modalities. When people do not share a system for communication they can quickly create one, and gesture is the best means of doing so.
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This article was submitted to Language Sciences, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Edited by: Iris Berent, Northeastern University, USA
Reviewed by: Pamela Perniss, University College London, UK; Bruno Galantucci, Yeshiva University, USA
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00354