Getting to the point: The influence of communicative intent on the kinematics of pointing gestures

David Peeters, Mingyuan Chu, Judith Holler, Asli Özyürek, Peter Hagoort

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingPublished conference contribution

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Abstract

In everyday communication, people not only use speech but also hand gestures to convey information. One intriguing question in gesture research has been why gestures take the specific form they do. Previous research has identified the speaker-gesturer’s communicative intent as one factor shaping the form of iconic gestures. Here we investigate whether communicative intent also shapes the form of pointing gestures. In an experimental setting, twenty-four participants produced pointing gestures identifying a referent for an addressee. The communicative intent of the speaker-gesturer was manipulated by varying the informativeness of the pointing gesture. A second independent variable was the presence or absence of concurrent speech. As a function of their communicative intent and irrespective of the presence of speech, participants varied the durations of the stroke and the post-stroke hold-phase of their gesture. These findings add to our understanding of how the communicative context influences the form that a gesture takes.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013)
EditorsM. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, I. Wachsmuth
Place of PublicationAustin, TX
PublisherCognitive Science Society
Pages1127-1132
Number of pages6
Publication statusPublished - 2013
Event35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Berlin, Germany
Duration: 31 Jul 20133 Aug 2013

Conference

Conference35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityBerlin
Period31/07/133/08/13

Bibliographical note

We thank Albert Russel for technical assistance. JH was supported through Marie Curie Fellowship #255569 as well as through ERC Advanced Grant #269484 INTERACT.

Keywords

  • pointing gesture
  • communicative intent
  • gesture production
  • action planning
  • deixis

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