Give your ideas a hand: the role of iconic hand gestures in enhancing divergent creative thinking.

Hand gestures play an integral role in multimodal language and communication. Even though the self-oriented functions of gestures, such as activating a speaker's lexicon and maintaining visuospatial imagery, have been emphasized, gestures' functions in creative thinking are not well-established. In the current study, we investigated the role of iconic gestures in verbal divergent thinking-a creative thinking process related to generating many novel ideas. Based on previous findings, we hypothesized that iconic gesture use would facilitate divergent thinking in young adults, especially those with high mental imagery skills. Participants performed Guildford's Alternative Uses Task in a gesture-spontaneous and in a gesture-encouraged condition. We measured fluency (number of ideas), originality (uniqueness of ideas), flexibility (number of idea categories), and elaboration (number of details) in divergent thinking. The results showed that producing iconic gestures in the gesture-encouraged condition positively predicted fluency, originality, and elaboration. In the gesture-spontaneous condition, producing iconic gestures also positively predicted elaboration but negatively predicted flexibility. Mental imagery skills did not interact with the effects of gestures on divergent thinking. These results suggest that iconic gestures are a promising candidate for enhancing almost all aspects of divergent thinking. Overall, the current study adds a new dimension to the self-oriented function of iconic gestures, that is, their contribution to creative thinking.

Does source reliability moderate the survival processing effect? The role of linguistic markers as reliability cues.

Adaptive memory retains information that would increase survival chances and reproductive success, resulting in the survival processing effect. Less is known about whether the reliability of the information interacts with the survival processing effect. From an adaptive point, information from reliable sources should lead to better encoding of information, particularly in a survival context. In Turkish, specific linguistic components called evidentiality markers encode whether the information presented is firsthand (direct) or not (indirect), providing insight into source reliability. In two experiments, we examined the effect of evidentiality markers on recall across survival and nonsurvival (moving) contexts, predicting that the survival processing effect would be stronger for information marked with evidentiality markers indicating direct information. Results of both experiments yielded a robust survival processing effect, as the sentences processed for their relevance to survival were better remembered than those processed for their relevance to nonsurvival events. Yet the marker type did not affect retention, regardless of being tested as a between- or within-subject factor. Specifically, the survival processing effect persisted even with evidentiality markers indicating indirect information, which suggests that the processing of survival-related information may be privileged even if potentially unreliable. We discuss these results in the context of recent studies of the interaction of language with memory.

Combining forces for causal reasoning: Children's predictions about physical interactions.

Reasoning about causal relations is essential for children's early cognitive development. The current study investigated 4-year-olds' (N = 58) reasoning about complex causal physical interactions in terms of predicting the endpoint of motion. In an online task, children were presented with four configurations that involved different interactions of forces and consequently different patterns of motion. These were Cause (one force moving an object), Enable (a secondary force promoting the motion), Prevent-180° (an opposing force hindering the motion), and Prevent-90° (two-dimensional; a perpendicular force altering the motion). Each prediction was made in terms of either the Distance or Direction of the motion, which was novel in this task compared with previous assessments. Results revealed differences between the configurations, with Cause being the easiest and Prevent-90° being the most difficult to predict. Furthermore, predictions were more accurate when options were about the motion's Direction, whereas Distance options may have aggravated reasoning. The current study extends previous findings on children's intuitive physics and causal cognition by showing that accuracy in reasoning not only is dependent on the number of forces and dimensions at work but also interacts with estimating the motion's Distance and Direction.

Sensitivity to visual cues within motion events in monolingual and bilingual infants.

It is well known that infants undergo developmental change in how they respond to language-relevant visual contrasts. For example, when viewing motion events, infants' sensitivities to background information ("ground-path cues," e.g., whether a background is flat and continuous or bounded) change with age. Prior studies with English and Japanese monolingual infants have demonstrated that 14-month-old infants discriminate between motion events that take place against different ground-paths (e.g., an unbounded field vs a bounded street). By 19 months of age, this sensitivity becomes more selective in monolingual infants; only learners of languages that lexically contrast these categories, such as Japanese, discriminate between such events. In this study, we investigated this progression in bilingual infants. We first replicated past reports of an age-related decline in ground-path sensitivity from 14 to 19 months in English monolingual infants living in a multilingual society. English-Mandarin bilingual infants living in that same society were then tested on discrimination of ground-path cues at 14, 19, and 24 months. Although neither the English nor Mandarin language differentiates motion events based on ground-path cues, bilingual infants demonstrated protracted sensitivity to these cues. Infants exhibited a lack of discrimination at 14 months, followed by discrimination at 19 months and a subsequent decline in discrimination at 24 months. In addition, bilingual infants demonstrated more fine-grained sensitivities to subtle ground cues not observed in monolingual infants.

The role of hand gestures in emotion communication: Do type and size of gestures matter?

We communicate emotions in a multimodal way, yet non-verbal emotion communication is a relatively understudied area of research. In three experiments, we investigated the role of gesture characteristics (e.g., type, size in space) on individuals' processing of emotional content. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate the emotional intensity of emotional narratives from the videoclips either with iconic or beat gestures. Participants in the iconic gesture condition rated the emotional intensity higher than participants in the beat gesture condition. In Experiment 2, the size of gestures and its interaction with gesture type were investigated in a within-subjects design. Participants again rated the emotional intensity of emotional narratives from the videoclips. Although individuals overall rated narrow gestures more emotionally intense than wider gestures, no effects of gesture type, or gesture size and type interaction were found. Experiment 3 was conducted to check whether findings of Experiment 2 were due to viewing gestures in all videoclips. We compared the gesture and no gesture (i.e., speech only) conditions and showed that there was not a difference between them on emotional ratings. However, we could not replicate the findings related to gesture size of Experiment 2. Overall, these findings indicate the importance of examining gesture's role in emotional contexts and that different gesture characteristics such as size of gestures can be considered in nonverbal communication.

The cost of changing language context: The language-dependent recall of fictional stories.

Language-dependent recall refers to the language-specific retrieval of memories in which the retrieval success depends on the match between the languages of encoding and retrieval. The present study investigated language-dependent recall in terms of memory accuracy, false memory, and episodic memory characteristics in the free recall of fictional stories. We also asked how language-dependent memories were influenced by language proficiency and visual imagery. One hundred and thirty-seven native Turkish (L1) speakers who were second-language learners of English (L2) were divided into four groups in which they read fictional stories and then recalled them: (1) Turkish reading-Turkish recall, (2) English reading-English recall, (3) English reading-Turkish recall, (4) Turkish reading-English recall. Regardless of the match between L1 or L2, accuracy was higher when participants read and recalled the stories in the same language than when they did it in different languages, showing the language-dependent recall effect. Notably, the effect of match or mismatch between encoding and retrieval languages on accuracy did not depend on L2 proficiency and visual imagery. In addition, false memories were salient, particularly for participants who read the stories in L2 but retrieved them in L1. Overall, our findings suggest that accuracy-oriented memory research provides a comprehensive investigation of language-dependent recall, addressing the links of language-dependent memories with accuracy, false memory, and episodic memory characteristics.

Early parental causal language input predicts children's later causal verb understanding.

How does parental causal input relate to children's later comprehension of causal verbs? Causal constructions in verbs differ across languages. Turkish has both lexical and morphological causatives. We asked whether (1) parental causal language input varied for different types of play (guided vs. free play), (2) early parental causal language input predicted children's causal verb understanding. Twenty-nine infants participated at three timepoints. Parents used lexical causatives more than morphological ones for guided-play for both timepoints, but for free-play, the same difference was only found at Time 2. For Time 3, children were tested on a verb comprehension and a vocabulary task. Morphological causative input, but not lexical causative input, during free-play predicted children's causal verb comprehension. For guided-play, the same relation did not hold. Findings suggest a role of specific types of causal input on children's understanding of causal verbs that are received in certain play contexts.

Parental use of causal language for preterm and full-term children: A longitudinal study.

Parents are often a good source of information, introducing children to how the world around them is described and explained in terms of cause-and-effect relations. Parents also vary in their speech, and these variations can predict children's later language skills. Being born preterm might be related to such parent-child interactions. The present longitudinal study investigated parental causal language use in Turkish, a language with particular causative morphology, across three time points when preterm and full-term children were 14-, 20-, and 26-months-old. In general, although preterm children heard fewer words overall, there were no differences between preterm and full-term groups in terms of the proportion of causal language input. Parental causal language input increased from 20 to 26 months, while the amount of overall verbal input remained the same. These findings suggest that neonatal status can influence the amount of overall parental talk, but not parental use of causal language.

From woof woof to dog: Interactions between parents' use of sound symbolic words and infants' vocabulary development.

Sound symbols, such as "woof woof" for a dog's barking, imitate the physical properties of their referents. Turkish is a sound symbolically rich language that allows flexible use of such words in different linguistic forms. The current study examined Turkish-speaking parents' use of sound symbolic words to their 14- and 20-month-olds and the concurrent and longitudinal relations between parents' sound symbolic input and infants' vocabulary knowledge. Thirty-four (n = 34) infants were observed at Time-1 (Mage  = 14.23 months, SD = 1.11) and Time-2 (Mage  = 20.30 months, SD = 1.24) during free play sessions with their parents to examine parental input. Infants' vocabulary knowledge was assessed by a parental report. Both the quantity and quality of parental sound symbolic input changed between 14 and 20 months of age. Furthermore, infants' earlier vocabulary knowledge at 14 months negatively predicted parents' later sound symbolic input at 20 months. Last, parents' sound symbolic input was positively and concurrently associated with 14-month-olds' vocabulary knowledge but was negatively and concurrently associated with 20-month-olds' vocabulary levels. These findings suggest an early interaction between infants' exposure to sound symbolic input and their vocabulary development.

Influence of causal language on causal understanding: A comparison between Swiss German and Turkish.

Young children have difficulties in understanding untypical causal relations. Although we know that hearing a causal description facilitates this understanding, less is known about what particular features of causal language are responsible for this facilitation. Here, we asked two questions. First, do syntactic and morphological cues in the grammatical structure of sentences facilitate the extraction of causal meaning? Second, do these different cues influence this facilitation to different degrees? We studied children learning either Swiss German or Turkish, two languages that differ in their expression of causality. Swiss German predominantly uses lexical causatives (e.g., schniidä [cut]), which lack a formal marker to denote causality. Turkish, alongside lexical causatives, uses morphological causatives, which formally mark causation (e.g., ye [eat] vs. yeDIr [feed]). We tested 2.5- to 3.5-year-old children's understanding of untypical cause-effect relations described with either noncausal language (e.g., Here is a cube and a car) or causal language using a pseudo-verb (e.g., lexical: The cube gorps the car). We tested 135 Turkish-learning children (noncausal, lexical, and morphological conditions) and 90 Swiss-German-learning children (noncausal and lexical conditions). Children in both language groups performed better in the causal language condition(s) than in the noncausal language condition. Furthermore, Turkish-learning children's performance in both the lexical and morphological conditions was similar to that of Swiss-German-learning children in the lexical condition and did not differ from each other. These findings suggest that the structural cues of causal language support children's understanding of untypical causal relations regardless of the type of construction.

The effects of observing different gestures during storytelling on the recall of path and event information in 5-year-olds and adults.

This study examined (a) how observing different types of gestures while listening to a story affected the recall of path and event information in 5-year-old children (n = 71) and adults (n = 55) and (b) whether the effects of gesture type on children's recall of information were related to individual differences such as working memory, language abilities, spontaneous gesture use, and gesture production during the recall task. Participants were asked four questions to measure their spontaneous gesture frequency. They then listened to a story that included different path and event information. Depending on the assigned condition, participants listened to the story with the narrator producing iconic gestures (gestures having semantic meaning), beat gestures (rhythmic hand movements), or no gesture. We then asked participants to relate what happened in the story and administered a recognition task about the story. Children were given standardized tests to assess their language and working memory skills. Children and adults best recalled the story after observing iconic gestures as compared with children and adults presented with beat gestures or no gestures. Children who were exposed to iconic gestures during encoding better recalled event information than children in the other conditions. Children's language abilities, but not working memory, were related to their recall performance. More important, children with better expressive language abilities benefitted more from seeing iconic gestures. These results suggest that observing iconic gestures at encoding facilitates recall and that children's language skills could play a role in encoding and using specific information provided by gestures.

Differential roles of gestures on spatial language in neurotypical elderly adults and individuals with focal brain injury.

Gestures might serve communicative functions by supplementing spoken expressions or restorative functions by facilitating speech production. Also, speakers with speech deficits use gestures to compensate for their speech impairments. In this study, we examined gesture use in speakers with and without speech impairments and how spoken spatial expressions changed when gestures were restrained. Six patients with speech problems and with left frontal and/or temporal lesions and 20 neurotypical controls described motion events in 3 different conditions (spontaneous gesture, only speech, and only gesture). In addition to the group analyses, we ran case analyses. Results showed that patients used more gestures compared to controls. Gestures served both communicative and restorative functions for patients whereas controls only used gestures for communicative purposes. Case analyses revealed that there were differential patterns among patients. Overall, gesture production is multifunctional and gestures serve different functions for different populations as well as within a population.

Any way the wind blows: Children's inferences about force and motion events.

Göksun, George, Hirsh-Pasek, and Golinkoff (2013) used force dynamics, or the semantic categories defined by spatial arrays of forces, to study the development of preschoolers' predictions about the outcomes of forces working in concert. The current study extends this approach to problems requiring inferences about causal factors. In total, 30 5- and 6-year-old children were asked to identify and coordinate forces to achieve a result. Problems varied in the number and orientation of forces, mirroring spatial arrays characteristic of categories like prevent (i.e., opposing forces). Children successfully inferred causes of single- and dual-force events, performing best when problems reflected the spatial arrays of forces described in language. Results support force dynamics as a valuable framework for the development of force and motion representations.

New insights from children with early focal brain injury: Lessons to be learned from examining STEM-related skills.

The study of cognitive development in children with early brain injury reveals crucial information about the developing brain and its plasticity. However, information on long-term outcomes of these children, especially in domains relevant to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) remains limited. In the current review, our goal is to address the existing research on cognitive development of children with pre- or perinatal focal brain lesion (PL) as it relates to children's STEM-related skills and suggest future work that could shed further light on the developmental trajectories of children with PL. We argue that examining STEM-related development in children with PL will have broader implications for our understanding of the nature of the plasticity children with PL exhibit as well as address theoretical questions in the field regarding the foundation skills for STEM, including visuospatial and mathematical skills.

The role of spatial words in the spatialisation of time.

Language about time is an integral part of how we spatialise time. Factors like temporal focus can be related to time spatialisation as well. The current study investigates the role of language in how we spatialise time, using a temporal diagram task modified to include the lateral axis. We asked participants to place temporal events provided in non-metaphorical, sagittal metaphorical, and non-sagittal metaphorical scenarios on a temporal diagram. We found that sagittal metaphors elicited sagittal spatialisations of time, whereas the other two types elicited lateral spatialisations. Participants sometimes used the sagittal and lateral axes in combination to spatialise time. Exploratory analyses indicated that individuals' time management habits, temporal distance, and event order in written scenarios were related to time spatialisations. Their temporal focus scores, however, were not. Findings suggest that temporal language plays an important role in how we map space onto time.

Temporal Gestures in Different Temporal Perspectives.

Temporal perspectives allow us to place ourselves and temporal events on a timeline, making it easier to conceptualize time. This study investigates how we take different temporal perspectives in our temporal gestures. We asked participants (n = 36) to retell temporal scenarios written in the Moving-Ego, Moving-Time, and Time-Reference-Point perspectives in spontaneous and encouraged gesture conditions. Participants took temporal perspectives mostly in similar ways regardless of the gesture condition. Perspective comparisons showed that temporal gestures of our participants resonated better with the Ego- (i.e., Moving-Ego and Moving-Time) versus Time-Reference-Point distinction instead of the classical Moving-Ego versus Moving-Time contrast. Specifically, participants mostly produced more Moving-Ego and Time-Reference-Point gestures for the corresponding scenarios and speech; however, the Moving-Time perspective was not adopted more than the others in any condition. Similarly, the Moving-Time gestures did not favor an axis over the others, whereas Moving-Ego gestures were mostly sagittal and Time-Reference-Point gestures were mostly lateral. These findings suggest that we incorporate temporal perspectives into our temporal gestures to a considerable extent; however, the classical Moving-Ego and Moving-Time classification may not hold for temporal gestures.

Through Thick and Thin: Gesture and Speech Remain as an Integrated System in Atypical Development.

Gesture and speech are tightly linked and form a single system in typical development. In this review, we ask whether and how the role of gesture and relations between speech and gesture vary in atypical development by focusing on two groups of children: those with peri- or prenatal unilateral brain injury (children with BI) and preterm born (PT) children. We describe the gestures of children with BI and PT children and the relations between gesture and speech, as well as highlight various cognitive and motor antecedents of the speech-gesture link observed in these populations. We then examine possible factors contributing to the variability in gesture production of these atypically developing children. Last, we discuss the potential role of seeing others' gestures, particularly those of parents, in mediating the predictive relationships between early gestures and upcoming changes in speech. We end the review by charting new areas for future research that will help us better understand the robust roles of gestures for typical and atypically-developing child populations.

Hands of confidence: When gestures increase confidence in spatial problem-solving.

This study examined whether the metacognitive system monitors the potential positive effects of gestures on spatial thinking. Participants (N = 59, 31F, Mage = 21.67) performed a mental rotation task, consisting of 24 problems varying in difficulty, and they evaluated their confidence in their answers to problems in either gesture or control conditions. The results revealed that performance and confidence were higher in the gesture condition, in which the participants were asked to use their gestures during problem-solving, compared with the control condition, extending the literature by evidencing gestures' role in metacognition. Yet, the effect was only evident for females, who already performed worse than males, and when the problems were difficult. Encouraging gestures adversely affected performance and confidence in males. Such results suggest that gestures selectively influence cognition and metacognition and highlight the importance of task-related (i.e., difficulty) and individual-related variables (i.e., sex) in elucidating the links between gestures, confidence, and spatial thinking.

Trust my gesture or my word: How do listeners choose the information channel during communication?

Information can be conveyed via multiple channels such as verbal and gestural (visual) channels during communication. Sometimes the information from different channels does not match (e.g., saying right while pointing to the left). How do addressees choose which information to act upon in such cases? In two experiments, we investigated this issue by having participants follow instructions on how to move objects on the screen. Experiment 1 examined whether people's choice of channel can be altered by feedback favoring either the verbal or the gestural channel. In Experiment 2, there was no feedback and participants were free to choose either channel. We also assessed participants' verbal and visuospatial working memory capacities. Results showed that, when faced with contradicting information, there is a natural bias at the group level toward relying on the verbal channel, although this bias can be temporarily altered by probabilistic feedback. Moreover, when labels were shorter and of higher frequency, participants relied more on the verbal channel. In the absence of feedback, the capacity of individuals' visual, but not verbal, working memory determined reliance on one channel versus the other. Collectively, these results show that information selection in communication is influenced by group-level biases, as well as the properties of items and characteristics of individuals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).