Publications

Abstract

How people learn about events often varies with some events perceived in their entirety and others are inferred based on the available evidence. Here, we investigate how children and adults linguistically encode the sources of their event knowledge. We focus on Turkish – a language that obligatorily encodes source of information for past events using two evidentiality markers. Children (4- to 5-year-olds and 6- to 7- year-olds) and adults watched and described events that they directly saw or inferred based on visual cues with manipulated degrees of indirectness. Overall, participants modified the evidential marking in their descriptions depending on (a) whether they saw or inferred the event and (b) the indirectness of the visual cues giving rise to an inference. There were no differences across age groups. These findings suggest that Turkish-speaking adults’ and children’s use of evidential markers are sensitive to the indirectness of the inferential evidence for events.

Abstract

Every day people see, describe, and remember motion events. However, the relation between multimodal encoding of motion events in speech and gesture, and memory is not yet fully understood. Moreover, whether language typology modulates this relation remains to be tested. This study investigates whether the type of motion event information (path or manner) mentioned in speech and gesture predicts which information is remembered and whether this varies across speakers of typologically different languages. Dutch- and Turkish-speakers watched and described motion events and completed a surprise recognition memory task. For both Dutch- and Turkish-speakers, manner memory was at chance level. Participants who mentioned path in speech during encoding were more accurate at detecting changes to the path in the memory task. The relation between mentioning path in speech and path memory did not vary cross-linguistically. Finally, the co-speech gesture did not predict memory above mentioning path in speech. These findings suggest that how speakers describe a motion event in speech is more important than the typology of the speakers’ native language in predicting motion event memory. The motion event videos are available for download for future research at https://osf.io/p8cas/.

Abstract

Speakers’ visual attention to events is guided by linguistic conceptualization of information in spoken language
production and in language-specific ways. Does production of language-specific co-speech gestures further guide
speakers’ visual attention during message preparation? Here, we examine the link between visual attention and
multimodal event descriptions in Turkish. Turkish is a verb-framed language where speakers’ speech and gesture
show language specificity with path of motion mostly expressed within the main verb accompanied by path
gestures. Turkish-speaking adults viewed motion events while their eye movements were recorded during non-
linguistic (viewing-only) and linguistic (viewing-before-describing) tasks. The relative attention allocated to path
over manner was higher in the linguistic task compared to the non-linguistic task. Furthermore, the relative
attention allocated to path over manner within the linguistic task was higher when speakers (a) encoded path in
the main verb versus outside the verb and (b) used additional path gestures accompanying speech versus not.
Results strongly suggest that speakers’ visual attention is guided by language-specific event encoding not only in
speech but also in gesture. This provides evidence consistent with models that propose integration of speech and
gesture at the conceptualization level of language production and suggests that the links between the eye and the
mouth may be extended to the eye and the hand.

Abstract

Understanding and acquiring language involve mapping language onto conceptual representations. Nevertheless, several issues remain unresolved with respect to (a) how such mappings are performed, and (b) whether conceptual representations are susceptible to cross‐linguistic influences. In this article, we discuss these issues focusing on the domain of evidentiality and sources of knowledge. Empirical evidence in this domain yields growing support for the proposal that linguistic categories of evidentiality are tightly linked to, build on, and reflect conceptual representations of sources of knowledge that are shared across speakers of different languages.

Abstract

In everyday life, people see, describe and remember motion events. We tested whether the type of motion event information (path or manner) encoded in speech and gesture predicts which information is remembered and if this varies across speakers of typologically different languages. We focus on intransitive motion events (e.g., a woman running to a tree) that are described differently in speech and co-speech gesture across languages, based on how these languages typologically encode manner and path information (Kita & Özyürek, 2003; Talmy, 1985). Speakers of Dutch (n = 19) and Turkish (n = 22) watched and described motion events. With a surprise (i.e. unexpected) recognition memory task, memory for manner and path components of these events was measured. Neither Dutch nor Turkish speakers’ memory for manner went above chance levels. However, we found a positive relation between path speech and path change detection: participants who described the path during encoding were more accurate at detecting changes to the path of an event during the memory task. In addition, the relation between path speech and path memory changed with native language: for Dutch speakers encoding path in speech was related to improved path memory, but for Turkish speakers no such relation existed. For both languages, co-speech gesture did not predict memory speakers. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the relations between speech, gesture, type of encoding in language and memory.

Abstract

Three experiments explored how well children recognize events from different types of visual experience: either by directly seeing an event or by indirectly experiencing it from post-event visual evidence. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5- to 6-year-old Turkish-speaking children (n = 32) successfully recognized events through either direct or indirect visual access. In Experiment 2, a new group of 4- and 5- to 6-year-olds (n = 37) reliably attributed event recognition to others who had direct or indirect visual access to events (even though performance was lower than Experiment 1). In both experiments, although children’s accu- racy improved with age, there was no difference between the two types of access. Experiment 3 replicated the findings from the youngest participants of Experiments 1 and 2 with a matched sample of English-speaking 4-year-olds (n = 37). Thus children can use different kinds of visual experience to support event representations in themselves and others.