Creating a communication system from scratch: gesture beats vocalization hands down

Fay, Nicolas; Lister, Casey J.; Ellison, T. Mark; Goldin‐Meadow, Susan

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00354

Cited by 96 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…In a few recent studies, participants were tasked to actually create iconic sounds. In one set of experiments, participants played a communication game in which they used manual gestures, vocalizations, or a combination to communicate to a partner words from a shared list that included emotions, actions, and objects (Fay, Arbib, & Garrod, 2013;Fay, Lister, Ellison, & Goldin-Meadow, 2014). Players demonstrated a moderate amount of success in the vocal condition, but they were significantly better with gestures, and gained no added benefit from the combination of modalities.…”

Section: Iconicity In Vocal Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The different communicative demands posed by particular ecological environments may also have played a role. In this respect, it is interesting to consider ethnographic studies documenting the cultural significance of vocal iconicity in the speech and ritual of some indigenous groups, such as the Kaluli in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea (Feld, 1996) or speakers of Pastaza Quechua living in the Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador (Nuckolls, 1996). Both groups live in environments that are dense in vegetation, resulting in poor visibility, and rich in sound -two factors that may contribute to the enhanced importance of sound-based iconicity in their cultures.…”

Section: Iconicity and Gesture In Language Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Iconicity in vocalization, comparisons with gesture, and implications for theories on the evolution of language

Perlman

Cain

2014

GEST

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Scholars have often reasoned that vocalizations are extremely limited in their potential for iconic expression, especially in comparison to manual gestures (e.g., Armstrong & Wilcox, 2007;Tomasello, 2008). As evidence for an alternative view, we first review the growing body of research related to iconicity in vocalizations, including experimental work on sound symbolism, cross-linguistic studies documenting iconicity in the grammars and lexicons of languages, and experimental studies that examine iconicity in the production of speech and vocalizations. We then report an experiment in which participants created vocalizations to communicate 60 different meanings, including 30 antonymic pairs. The vocalizations were measured along several acoustic properties, and these properties were compared between antonyms. Participants were highly consistent in the kinds of sounds they produced for the majority of meanings, supporting the hypothesis that vocalization has considerable potential for iconicity. In light of these findings, we present a comparison between vocalization and manual gesture, and examine the detailed ways in which each modality can function in the iconic expression of particular kinds of meanings. We further discuss the role of iconic vocalizations and gesture in the evolution of language since our divergence from the great apes. In conclusion, we suggest that human communication is best understood as an ensemble of kinesis and vocalization, not just speech, in which expression in both modalities spans the range from arbitrary to iconic.

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Section: Iconicity In Vocal Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Iconicity and Gesture In Language Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Iconicity in vocalization, comparisons with gesture, and implications for theories on the evolution of language

Perlman

Cain

2014

GEST

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“…Finally, silent gesture and elicited pantomime are particularly interesting types of communication, having recently risen to the status of important experimental Defining Pantomime for Language Evolution Research paradigms in broadly construed language evolution studies (Fay et al 2013(Fay et al , 2014Goldin-Meadow et al 2008). They are both non-linguistic, improvised acts of communication executed in the visual channel, which-taking the bulk of Donald's and Zlatev's criteria-should be classified as instances of mimetic communication.…”

Section: Defining Pantomimementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The dominance of the visuomotor channel in pantomime is dictated by its iconic potential, superior to the vocal-auditory channel in the context of iconically bootstrapping a communication system (see e.g. Fay et al 2013Fay et al , 2014. However, mimetic communication is not at all constrained to this one channel but makes active and frequent use of other modalities and semiotic resources-''facial expression and other modes of emotional expression, such as a variety of calls and cries, and strictly prosodic aspects of voice modulation would also have fitted into a purely mimetic culture'' (Donald 1991: 78).…”

Section: Multimodal (But Primarily Visual)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining Pantomime for Language Evolution Research

Żywiczyński

Wacewicz

Sibierska

2016

Topoi

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Although pantomimic scenarios recur in the most important historical as well as current accounts of language origins, a serious problem is the lack of a commonly accepted definition of ''pantomime''. We scrutinise several areas of study, from theatre studies to semiotics to primatology, pointing to the differences in use that may give rise to misunderstandings, and working towards a set of definitional criteria of ''pantomime'' specifically useful for language evolution research. We arrive at a definition of pantomime as a communication mode that is mimetic; non-conventional and motivated; multimodal (primarily visual); improvised; using the whole body rather than exclusively manual; holistic; communicatively complex and self-sufficient; semantically complex; displaced, openended and universal. So conceived, ''pantomime'' is a near synonym of ''bodily-mimetic communication'' as envisaged by Donald and Zlatev. On a wider plane, our work may help organise some of the terminology and discussion in language evolution, e.g. by drawing a clear distinction between gestural and pantomimic scenarios or by specifying the relation between pantomimic and multimodal scenarios.

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“…There are many studies which induce agents to invent on the fly coordination and communication tools, and which track how those tools evolve over the course of the experiment (e.g. [45,46]). In contrast, the work on animal innovation seems largely focused on resourcegathering innovation.…”

Section: Missing Linksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptable individuals and innovative lineages

Sterelny

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 15 to a theme issue 'Innovation in animals and humans: understanding the origins and development of novel and creative behaviour'. Subject Areas: evolutionKeywords: innovation, innovation and collective action, social innovations, innovation and social learning Author for correspondence: Kim Sterelny e-mail: kim.sterelny@anu.edu.au Adaptable individuals and innovative lineages Kim SterelnySchool of Philosophy, Australian National University, Coombs Building, Fellows Road, Acton, Canberra, 0200 ACT, Australia This paper suggests (i) that while work on animal innovation has made good progress in understanding some of the proximate mechanisms and selective regimes through which innovation emerges, it has somewhat neglected the role of the social environment of innovation; a neglect manifest in the fact that innovation counts are almost always counts of resource-acquisition innovations; the invention of social tools is rarely considered. The same is true of many experimental projects, as these typically impose food acquisition tasks on their experimental subjects. (ii) That neglect is important, because innovations often pose collective action problems; the hominin species were technically innovative because they were also socially adaptable. (iii) In part for this reason, there remains a disconnect between research on hominin innovation and research on animal innovation. (iv) Finally, the paper suggests that there is something of a disconnect between the theoretical work on innovation in hominin evolution (based on theories of cultural evolution) and the experimental tradition on human innovation. That disconnect is largely due to the theoretical work retreating from strong claims about the proximate mechanisms of human cultural accumulation. Hominin exceptionalism and its implicationsPrima facie, the capacity to innovate seems highly adaptive, especially in heterogeneous and/or fluctuating environments, as a means of responding successfully to new risks and opportunities, but also in more stable or uniform environments, as a means of easing the competitive squeeze on resources. The widespread existence of complex, canalized responses to environmental challenges documented in the niche construction and behavioural ecology literature-nest-building, burrow-making, migration in response to seasonal change-reinforces this impression [1]. For these behaviours presumably had their origins as innovations, prior to their coming under genetic control. Moreover, while as we shall see, some kinds of innovations may well be cognitively demanding, a basic capacity to innovate is almost certainly phylogenetically widespread, as it depends only on reinforcement learning: on an agent's capacity to register the environmental state it finds itself in; register the response it has produced in that state; and to evaluate the outcome of that response [2]. If innovating would often be adaptive, and if innovation often depends only on capacities that are ancient and widespread, then what explains the scope and limits ...

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Creating a communication system from scratch: gesture beats vocalization hands down

Cited by 96 publications

References 62 publications

Iconicity in vocalization, comparisons with gesture, and implications for theories on the evolution of language

Iconicity in vocalization, comparisons with gesture, and implications for theories on the evolution of language

Defining Pantomime for Language Evolution Research

Adaptable individuals and innovative lineages

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