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SUMMARY:Gesture\, language and thought - Sotaro Kita\, University of Birmi
 ngham\, UK
DTSTART:20090203T160000Z
DTEND:20090203T173000Z
UID:TALK15704@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Susan Rolfe
DESCRIPTION:We produce gestures spontaneously not only when we speak ("co-
 speech gestures")\, but also when we think without speaking ("co-thought" 
 gestures). I will first present the evidence that co-speech gestures are h
 ighly sensitive to what goes on in speech production. For example\, our cr
 oss-linguistic study has indicated that gestural representation of motion 
 events varies as a function of the linguistic structures used to encode mo
 tion events.  Furthermore\, gestures are produced more frequently when it 
 is difficult to organise ideas for linguistic expression. Despite these pi
 eces of evidence for a tight link between gesture and language\, there is 
 also evidence for independence. I will present the evidence that gesture p
 roduction is dissociable from speech production based on the data from spl
 it-brain patients. Furthermore\, I will also present the results from expe
 riments (with healthy participants)\, which show important parallelisms be
 tween co-speech gestures and co-thought gestures\, suggesting that these t
 wo types of gestures are produced from the same mechanism. I will conclude
  that gestures are produced from a mechanism that is inherently independen
 t from\, but highly interactive with\, the speech production process.
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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