Publications

Abstract

In spoken languages, children acquire locative terms in a cross-linguistically stable order. Terms similar in meaning to in and on emerge earlier than those similar to front and behind, followed by left and right. This order has been attributed to the complexity of the relations expressed by different locative terms. An additional possibility is that children may be delayed in expressing certain spatial meanings partly due to difficulties in discovering the mappings between locative terms in speech and spatial relation they express. We investigate cognitive and mapping difficulties in the domain of spatial language by comparing how children map spatial meanings onto speech versus visually motivated forms in co-speech gesture across different spatial relations. Twenty-four 8-year-old and 23 adult native Turkish-speakers described four-picture displays where the target picture depicted in-on, front-behind, or left-right relations between objects. As the complexity of spatial relations increased, children were more likely to rely on gestures as opposed to speech to informatively express the spatial relation. Adults overwhelmingly relied on speech to informatively express the spatial relation, and this did not change across the complexity of spatial relations. Nevertheless, even when spatial expressions in both speech and co-speech gesture were considered, children lagged behind adults when expressing the most complex left-right relations. These findings suggest that cognitive development and mapping difficulties introduced by the modality of expressions interact in shaping the development of spatial language.

Abstract

Prior work with hearing children acquiring a spoken language as their first language shows that spatial language and cognition are related systems and spatial language use predicts spatial memory. Here, we further investigate the extent of this relationship in signing deaf children and adults and ask if late sign language exposure, as well as the frequency and the type of spatial language use that might be affected by late exposure, modulate subsequent memory for spatial relations. To do so, we compared spatial language and memory of 8-year-old late-signing children (after 2 years of exposure to a sign language at the school for the deaf) and late-signing adults to their native-signing counterparts. We elicited picture descriptions of Left-Right relations in Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili) and measured the subsequent recognition memory accuracy of the described pictures. Results showed that late-signing adults and children were similar to their native-signing counterparts in how often they encoded the spatial relation. However, late-signing adults but not children differed from their native-signing counterparts in the type of spatial language they used. However, neither late sign language exposure nor the frequency and type of spatial language use modulated spatial memory accuracy. Therefore, even though late language exposure seems to influence the type of spatial language use, this does not predict subsequent memory for spatial relations. We discuss the implications of these findings based on the theories concerning the correspondence between spatial language and cognition as related or rather independent systems.

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.