The present study examines the visual recognition of action simulations by finger gestures (ASFGs) produced by sighted and blind individuals. In ASFGs, fingers simulate legs to represent actions such as jumping, spinning, climbing, etc. The question is to determine whether the common motor experience of one’s own body is sufficient to produce adequate ASFGs or whether the possibility to see gestures from others are also necessary to do it. Three experiments were carried out to address this question. Experiment 1 examined in 74 sighted adults the recognition of 18 types of ASFGs produced by 20 blindfolded sighted adults. Results showed that rates of correct recognition were globally very high, but varied with the type of ASFG. Experiment 2 studied in 91 other sighted adults the recognition of ASFGs produced by 10 early blind and 7 late blind adults. Results also showed a high level of recognition with a similar order of recognizability by type of ASFG. However, ASFGs produced by early blind individuals were more poorly recognized than those produced by late blind individuals. In order to match data of recognition obtained with the form that gestures are produced by individuals, two independant judges evaluated prototypical and atypical attributes of ASFG produced by blindfolded sighted, early blind and late blind individuals in Experiment 3. Results revealed the occurrence of more atypical attributes in ASFG produced by blind individuals: their ASFGs transpose more body movements from a character-viewpoint in less agreement with visual rules. The practical interest of the study relates to the relevance of including ASFGs as a new exploratory procedure in tactile devices which are more apt to convey action concepts to blind users/readers.

Relevance in acts of communication is a focus in both Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and it operates on two levels. One level corresponds to interactions between characters in the plot, the other to readers’ reception of the overarching utterance constituting the literary work. The chapter addresses both levels while linking relevance theory to kinesic analysis, in order to account for some of the cognitive processes activated in literary reception when we understand complex kinesic information (movements, postures, gaits, gestural interactions). While relevance theory helps account for communicational inference procedures within the plot as well as in the work’s literary reception, kinesic analysis addresses the specific type of inference elicited in readers by linguistic utterances referring to gestural and sensorimotor elements in narrative.

Embodied cognition, kinaesthetic knowledge, and kinesic imagination are central not only to acts of creation but also to the reception of artworks. This article substantiates this claim by focusing on sensorimotricity in art and literature, presenting two sets of analytical distinctions that pertain to dynamics in gesture and movement. The first set of distinctions—kinesis, kinaesthesia, kinetics, and kinematics—and the second set—timing, tempo, and momentum—are used to analyse literary descriptions and visual depictions of movements. The first set of distinctions is discussed in the first part of the article in relation to medieval drawings and literary excerpts from different historical periods (in works by Ovid, Shakespeare, and Proust). The second part focuses on visual arts and leads to an analysis of Bruegel's Fall of the Rebel Angels, while the third part presents a kinesic analysis of the Apollo and Daphne episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses. A heightened attention to the cognitive processing of kinesic features in acts of reception enhances the role and responsibility of readers and viewers in the ways in which they grasp the movement-based meanings formalized by artists of various cultures and historical periods.

Cahiers de Narratologie Analyse et théorie narratives 28 | 2015 Le récit comme acte cognitif Les comédiens de stand-up et la preuve par le rire : le récit comme acte cognitif dans Star Wars Canteen 1 & 2 d'Eddie Izzard*

This essay considers David Rudrum's claim that narrative is a type of language act that needs to be construed with regard to its use. Here this claim is related to one of the most influential literary traditions in the history of fiction: the Eastern Book of Sindibad and its Western offshoot, the Seven Sages of Rome, in which narrative use is of central significance. I focus more particularly on a tale embedded in the Eastern Book of Sindibad, "The Merchant and the Rogues," which was adapted and translated into Middle English in the form of the fifteenth-century Tale of Beryn, an anonymous continuation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The Sindibad tale and the Tale of Beryn thematize narrative use in the context of a trial, in which the pleas and counterpleas highlight the function of fictionalizing acts. Fiction in these narratives is conceptualized as a practice. Finally, I argue that the production and reception of the Tale of Beryn must be linked to the socioprofessional milieu and cultural activities of late medieval law students.