Investigating the influence of gestures on the timing of turn-taking: implications for language processing
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2019-08-22
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en
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Abstract
By its nature language is a multimodal phenomenon. More and more psycholinguistic studies
interested in visual signals reveal that gestures facilitate language production and comprehension. How this manifests in natural conversation, however, is difficult to research
with traditional experimental design and has not yet received much attention. Turn-taking is
the underlying mechanism that governs conversation and because of how fast it is, it poses
high cognitive demands on the speakers, making it an ideal subject for investigating factors
that influence language processing. To further investigate this, naturally occurring question-response sequences were analysed. It was found that gestures in questions, but also in
responses, lead to turn-transitions smoother by decreasing gap times. This pattern was
observed in both triadic as well as dyadic conversations, showing that psycholinguistic
findings on gestures and language processing can be generalized to more ecologically valid
circumstances. The results of this study emphasise the importance of including the visual
modality in language research.
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