Multimodal language in child-directed versus adult-directed speech.

Speakers design their multimodal communication according to the needs and knowledge of their interlocutors, phenomenon known as audience design. We use more sophisticated language (e.g., longer sentences with complex grammatical forms) when communicating with adults compared with children. This study investigates how speech and co-speech gestures change in adult-directed speech (ADS) versus child-directed speech (CDS) for three different tasks. Overall, 66 adult participants (Mage = 21.05, 60 female) completed three different tasks (story-reading, storytelling and address description) and they were instructed to pretend to communicate with a child (CDS) or an adult (ADS). We hypothesised that participants would use more complex language, more beat gestures, and less iconic gestures in the ADS compared with the CDS. Results showed that, for CDS, participants used more iconic gestures in the story-reading task and storytelling task compared with ADS. However, participants used more beat gestures in the storytelling task for ADS than CDS. In addition, language complexity did not differ across conditions. Our findings indicate that how speakers employ different types of gestures (iconic vs beat) according to the addressee's needs and across different tasks. Speakers might prefer to use more iconic gestures with children than adults. Results are discussed according to audience design theory.

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).

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.

Gesture Use and Processing: A Review on Individual Differences in Cognitive Resources.

Speakers use spontaneous hand gestures as they speak and think. These gestures serve many functions for speakers who produce them as well as for listeners who observe them. To date, studies in the gesture literature mostly focused on group-comparisons or the external sources of variation to examine when people use, process, and benefit from using and observing gestures. However, there are also internal sources of variation in gesture use and processing. People differ in how frequently they use gestures, how salient their gestures are, for what purposes they produce gestures, and how much they benefit from using and seeing gestures during comprehension and learning depending on their cognitive dispositions. This review addresses how individual differences in different cognitive skills relate to how people employ gestures in production and comprehension across different ages (from infancy through adulthood to healthy aging) from a functionalist perspective. We conclude that speakers and listeners can use gestures as a compensation tool during communication and thinking that interacts with individuals' cognitive dispositions.

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.

Effects of Different Anesthetic Agents on Surgical Site Hemorrhage During Circumcision.

PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of ketamine+midazolam and propofol+sevoflurane anesthesia on surgical site hemorrhage during circumcision procedures. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The boys undergoing circumcision surgery were included in the study. The patients were divided into two groups. In Group 1 (n = 50), 0.01 mg/kg midazolam and 2 mg/kg IV ketamine were administered. In Group 2 (n = 50), 1 ?g/kg fentanyl, 1 mg/kg lidocaine 2%, and 2-3 mg/kg IV propofol were administered, and patency of airway was ensured with a laryngeal mask airway. The intraoperative bleeding scale was recorded during the procedure to evaluate surgical site bleeding. Hemorrhage was checked for the first three hours using the postoperative bleeding scale to follow the amount of hemorrhage. RESULTS: Intraoperative bleeding scores were significantly higher in Group 1 as compared to Group 2. However, there was no significant difference between the groups regarding frequency of postoperative hemorrhage. Themean blood pressure values measured at 5th, 10th, 15th minutes and recovery room were significantly higher in Group 1. CONCLUSION: The intraoperative bleeding scores were significantly higher with ketamine+midazolam compared to propofol+sevoflurane. On the other hand this hemorrhage can be controlled easily with appropriate hemostasis, and the amount of blood loss was not clinically significant. We think that our study makes a positive contribution to the literature about the effects of anesthetics on the surgical site bleeding during circumcision. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION: ACTRN12616000189426.

Unilateral Horner Syndrome Following Epidural Anaesthesia in a Morbidly Obese Parturient.

Horner's syndrome is rarely observed in epidural anaesthesia; it is characterized by ptosis and enophthalmos on the affected side; miosis, anisocoria, and conjunctival hyperemia in the affected eye and anhydrosis, flushing on the affected side of the face. It is usually a complication spontaneously resolved without permanent neurological deficits. Intraoral anaesthesia, stellate, cervical and brachial plexus block, thoracic, lumbar and caudal epidural anaesthesia and intrapleural analgesia are the main causes associated with Horner's syndrome in anaesthesia. Among the other causes of Horner's syndrome are head and neck surgery, trauma and puncture of the internal jugular vein. We aimed to present a case with unilateral Horner's syndrome, which appeared in the morbidly obese parturient after lumbar epidural anaesthesia.