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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Malleability of spatial skills: bridging developmental psychology and toy design for joyful STEAM development.

Previous research has established that advances in spatial cognition predict STEAM success, and construction toys provide ample opportunities to foster spatial cognition. Despite various construction toy designs in the market, mostly brick-shaped building blocks are used in spatial cognition research. This group of toys is known to enhance mental rotation; however, mental rotation is not the only way to comprehend the environment three-dimensionally. More specifically, mental folding and perspective taking training have not received enough attention as they can also be enhanced with the construction toys, which are framed based on the 2×2 classification of spatial skills (intrinsic-static, intrinsic-dynamic, extrinsic-static, extrinsic-dynamic). To address these gaps, we compile evidence from both developmental psychology and toy design fields to show the central role played by mental folding and perspective taking skills as well as the importance of the variety in toy designs. The review was conducted systematically by searching peer reviewed design and psychology journals and conference proceedings. We suggest that, over and above their physical properties, construction toys offer affordances to elicit spatial language, gesture, and narrative among child-caregiver dyads. These interactions are essential for the development of spatial skills in both children and their caregivers. As developmental psychology and toy design fields are two domains that can contribute to the purpose of developing construction toys to boost spatial skills, we put forward six recommendations to bridge the current gaps between these fields. Consequently, new toy designs and empirical evidence regarding malleability of different spatial skills can contribute to the informal STEAM development.

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.

The creative interplay between hand gestures, convergent thinking, and mental imagery.

Using hand gestures benefits children's divergent thinking and enhances verbal improvisation in adults. In the present study, we asked whether gestures were also associated with convergent thinking by activating individuals' verbal lexicon and maintaining their visuospatial imagery. We tested young adults on verbal and visual convergent thinking, controlling for their mental imagery skills. Results showed that gestures and mental imagery skills play a role in verbal but not visual convergent thinking. Regardless of whether gestures were spontaneous or encouraged, we found a negative association between overall gesture frequency and verbal convergent thinking or individuals with low mental imagery, and a positive association for individuals with high mental imagery. Representational gestures benefited verbal convergent thinking for everyone except those who had low mental imagery and no experience with the task. Performing beat gestures hampered verbal convergent thinking in people with lower mental imagery capacity and helped those who had high mental imagery and previous experience with the task. We also found that gesturing can benefit people with lower verbal abilities on verbal convergent thinking, however, high spatial imagery abilities were required for gestures to boost verbal convergent thinking. The current study adds a new dimension to both the embodied creativity literature and the kaleidoscope of individual differences in gesture research.

Gestures cued by demonstratives in speech guide listeners' visual attention during spatial language comprehension.

Gestures help speakers and listeners during communication and thinking, particularly for visual-spatial information. Speakers tend to use gestures to complement the accompanying spoken deictic constructions, such as demonstratives, when communicating spatial information (e.g., saying "The candle is here" and gesturing to the right side to express that the candle is on the speaker's right). Visual information conveyed by gestures enhances listeners' comprehension. Whether and how listeners allocate overt visual attention to gestures in different speech contexts is mostly unknown. We asked if (a) listeners gazed at gestures more when they complement demonstratives in speech ("here") compared to when they express redundant information to speech (e.g., "right") and (b) gazing at gestures related to listeners' information uptake from those gestures. We demonstrated that listeners fixated gestures more when they expressed complementary than redundant information in the accompanying speech. Moreover, overt visual attention to gestures did not predict listeners' comprehension. These results suggest that the heightened communicative value of gestures as signaled by external cues, such as demonstratives, guides listeners' visual attention to gestures. However, overt visual attention does not seem to be necessary to extract the cued information from the multimodal message. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

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.

The role of gestures in autobiographical memory.

Speakers employ co-speech gestures when thinking and speaking; however, gesture's role in autobiographical episodic representations is not known. Based on the gesture-for-conceptualization framework, we propose that gestures, particularly representational ones, support episodic event representations by activating existing episodic elements and causing new ones to be formed in the autobiographical recollections. These gestures may also undertake information-chunking roles to allow for further processing during remembering, such as a sense of recollective experience. Participants (N = 41) verbally narrated three events (a past autobiographical, a future autobiographical, and a non-autobiographical event) and then rated their phenomenological characteristics. We found that, even though gesture use was not different across the three event conditions, representational gestures were positively associated with the episodic event details as well as their recollective quality within the past autobiographical event narratives. These associations were not observed in future event narrations. These findings suggest that gestures are potentially instrumental in the retrieval of details in autobiographical memories.

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.

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.

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.

Gesture use in L1-Turkish and L2-English: Evidence from emotional narrative retellings.

Bilinguals tend to produce more co-speech hand gestures to compensate for reduced communicative proficiency when speaking in their L2. We here investigated L1-Turkish and L2-English speakers' gesture use in an emotional context. We specifically asked whether and how (1) speakers gestured differently while retelling L1 versus L2 and positive versus negative narratives and (2) gesture production during retellings was associated with speakers' later subjective emotional intensity ratings of those narratives. We asked 22 participants to read and then retell eight emotion-laden narratives (half positive, half negative; half Turkish, half English). We analysed gesture frequency during the entire retelling and during emotional speech only (i.e., gestures that co-occur with emotional phrases such as "happy"). Our results showed that participants produced more representational gestures in L2 than in L1; however, they used more representational gestures during emotional content in L1 than in L2. Participants also produced more co-emotional speech gestures when retelling negative than positive narratives, regardless of language, and more beat gestures co-occurring with emotional speech in negative narratives in L1. Furthermore, using more gestures when retelling a narrative was associated with increased emotional intensity ratings for narratives. Overall, these findings suggest that (1) bilinguals might use representational gestures to compensate for reduced linguistic proficiency in their L2, (2) speakers use more gestures to express negative emotional information, particularly during emotional speech, and (3) gesture production may enhance the encoding of emotional information, which subsequently leads to the intensification of emotion perception.

Gradual Route to Productivity: Evidence from Turkish Morphological Causatives.

Becoming productive with grammatical categories is a gradual process in children's language development. Here, we investigated this transition process by focusing on Turkish causatives. Previous research examining spontaneous and elicited production of Turkish causatives with familiar verbs attested the onset and early stages of productivity at ages 2 to 3 (Aksu-Koç & Slobin, 1985; Nakipoglu, Uzundag, & Sarigül, 2021). So far, however, we know very little about children's understanding of causatives with novel verbs. In the present study, we asked: (a) When does the generalization of causative morphology in a novel context emerge? and (b) What role does child-directed input play in this development? To answer the first question, we conducted comprehension-judgment experiments with children aged 2;6-6;11 using pseudo-verbs (Study 1 & 2). Results showed that children preferred the Turkish causative suffix -DIr over an unrelated or no suffix to denote caused events earliest at age 4;10. To answer the second question, we analyzed child-directed speech from a longitudinal corpus of Turkish language acquisition (Study 3). Results showed that when addressing children younger than age 3, caregivers used the -DIr suffix with little variation considering the overall variability of verbs they could utter. Overall, these findings suggest that productivity with morphological causatives in a novel context emerges in a later stage of acquisition. This later development might partly be accounted for by the insufficient variation of morphological causatives in the early input.