Using space to talk and gesture about numbers: Evidence from the TV News Archive (original) (raw)

’Tiny numbers’ are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive

PLOS ONE, 2020

We report a large-scale, quantitative investigation of manual gestures that speakers perform when speaking metaphorically about numerical quantities. We used the TV News Archive-an online database of over 2 million English language news broadcasts-to examine 681 videos in which 584 speakers used the phrase 'tiny number', 'small number', 'large number', or 'huge number', which metaphorically frame numerical quantity in terms of physical size. We found that the gestures speakers used reflect a number of different strategies to express the metaphoric size of quantities. When referring to greater versus lesser quantities, speakers were far more likely to gesture (1) with an open versus closed hand configuration, (2) with an outward versus inward movement, and (3) with a wider distance between the gesturing hands. These patterns were often more pronounced for the phrases containing more extreme adjectives ('tiny/huge number'). However, we did not find that speakers performed two-handed versus one-handed gestures. Nor did we find that speakers performed right-handed versus left-handed gestures, when referring to greater versus lesser quantities. Overall, this work supports the claim that metaphoric thought is involved in the production of verbal metaphors that describe numerical magnitudes. It demonstrates that size-based numerical associations observed in previous lab experiments are active in real-life communication outside the lab.

Communicating about quantity without a language model: Number devices in homesign grammar

Cognitive Psychology, 2013

All natural languages have formal devices for communicating about number, be they lexical (e.g., two, many) or grammatical (e.g., plural markings on nouns and/or verbs). Here we ask whether linguistic devices for number arise in communication systems that have not been handed down from generation to generation. We examined deaf individuals who had not been exposed to a usable model of conventional language (signed or spoken), but had nevertheless developed their own gestures, called homesigns, to communicate. Study 1 examined four adult homesigners and a hearing communication partner for each homesigner. The adult homesigners produced two main types of number gestures: gestures that enumerated sets (cardinal number marking), and gestures that signaled one vs. more than one (non-cardinal number marking). Both types of gestures resembled, in form and function, number signs in established sign languages and, as such, were fully integrated into each homesigner's gesture system and, in this sense, linguistic. The number gestures produced by the homesigners' hearing communication partners displayed some, but not all, of the homesigners' linguistic patterns. To better understand the origins of the patterns displayed by the adult homesigners, Study 2 examined a child homesigner and his hearing mother, and found that the child's number gestures displayed all of the properties found in the adult homesigners' gestures, but his mother's gestures did not. The findings suggest that number gestures and their linguistic use can appear relatively early in homesign development, and that hearing communication partners are not likely to be the source of 0010-0285/$ -see front matter Ó Cognitive Psychology jou rn al homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cogpsych homesigners' linguistic expressions of non-cardinal number. Linguistic devices for number thus appear to be so fundamental to language that they can arise in the absence of conventional linguistic input.

Gestures and conceptual integration in mathematical talk

Educational Studies in Mathematics, 2009

Spontaneous gesture produced in conjunction with speech is considered as both a source of data about mathematical thinking, and as an integral modality in communication and cognition. The analysis draws on a corpus of more than 200 gestures collected during 3 h of interviews with prospective elementary school teachers on the topic of fractions. The analysis examines how gestures express meaning, utilizing the framework of cognitive linguistics to argue that gestures are both composed of, and provide inputs to, conceptual blends for mathematical ideas, and a standard typology drawn from gesture studies is extended to address the function of gestures within mathematics more appropriately.

Gesture as a window onto children's number knowledge

Cognition, 2015

Before learning the cardinal principle (knowing that the last word reached when counting a set represents the size of the whole set), children do not use number words accurately to label most set sizes. However, it remains unclear whether this difficulty reflects a general inability to conceptualize and communicate about number, or a specific problem with number words. We hypothesized that children's gestures might reflect knowledge of number concepts that they cannot yet express in speech, particularly for numbers they do not use accurately in speech (numbers above their knower-level). Number gestures are iconic in the sense that they are item-based (i.e., each finger maps onto one item in a set) and therefore may be easier to map onto sets of objects than number words, whose forms do not map transparently onto the number of items in a set and, in this sense, are arbitrary. In addition, learners in transition with respect to a concept often produce gestures that convey differen...

Gesture as data for a phenomenographic analysis of mathematical conceptions

2013

This paper reports on a phenomenographic investigation for which both participant utterances and their gestures were analysed in order for researchers to gain insight into their understanding of the concept of rate. Video-recordings were made of twenty interviews with Year 10 students. Detailed analysis, of both the sound and images, illuminated the meaning of rate-related gestures. Findings indicate that students often use the symbols and metaphors of gesture to complement, supplement or even contradict verbal descriptions. This study demonstrates, in one setting, the efficacy of phenomenography, with attention not only to participants’ words but also their gestures, to explore mathematical conceptions.

The Metaphorization of Space in Speech and Gesture

Cognition and spoken language are fundamentally imbued with spatiality to the point that they seem to create or re-create a spatial world of their own. The structuring of space serves as a basis for the structuring of other areas of cognition and spoken language expression, such as temporality, abstract notions, and relationships, the experience of which is neither so vivid nor so direct as the spatial experience. Thus our thinking is often based on spatial categories, and this use of spatial categories in languages is largely culture specific. Metaphorization has a converging effect on two notions that belong to different categories but which share one or more common characteristics. With the development of cognitive linguistics, the metaphor is no longer considered merely as a literary device or as an ornamental rhetorical figure of speech, but rather as an essential part of cognition and spoken expression. Thus, positive or negative emotions toward somebody can be related to spatial closeness or distance (a close friend, a distant acquaintance) ; states and abstract notions are often attributed the spatial dimensions of containers (deep trouble, empty words) ; and temporal relations are often spatially expressed (e.g. A lot of new Internet companies are here today and gone tomorrow). Examples of metaphorization are observed in words as well as in the gestures that co-occur with speech. The speaker´s gesticulatory space becomes a ground for the demonstration of spatiotemporal coordinates as well as for the objectification of abstract notions and their interrelations. Speech gestures show the indivisibility of the outside world's spatiality and abstract cognitive linguistic spatiality.

Squeezing, striking, and vocalizing: Is number representation fundamentally spatial?

Cognition, 2011

Numbers are fundamental entities in mathematics, but their cognitive bases are unclear. Abundant research points to linear space as a natural grounding for number representation. But, is number representation fundamentally spatial? We disentangle number representation from standard number-to-line reporting methods, and compare numerical estimations in educated participants using line-reporting with three nonspatial reporting conditions (squeezing, bell-striking, and vocalizing). All three cases of nonspatial-reporting consistently reproduced well-established results obtained with number-line methods. Furthermore, unlike line-reporting-and congruent with the psychophysical Weber-Fechner law-nonspatial reporting systematically produced logarithmic mappings for all nonsymbolic stimuli. Strikingly, linear mappings were obtained exclusively in conditions with culturally mediated elements (e.g., words). These results suggest that number representation is not fundamentally spatial, but builds on a deeper magnitude sense that manifests spatially and nonspatially mediated by magnitude, stimulus modality, and reporting condition. Number-to-space mappings-although ubiquitous in the modern world-do not seem to be rooted directly in brain evolution but have been culturally privileged and enhanced.

Polysigns and information density in teachers’ gestures

2013

Gesture goes hand in hand with speech and is a powerful communication device in expressing abstract concepts. In this paper, we analyse the spontaneous gestures of two teachers filmed teaching lessons on halving. Both speech and gesture were transcribed on Elan, and all the gestures were coded. We then focused on key gestures contributing to the mathematical concepts of halving discrete entities. We show how these gestures chain and provide multiple layers of information that embody and spatially represent the concept of halving. Simultaneously teachers use these representative gestures in interactive ways with children to enact the concept of halving. Gestures mediate the transition from concrete and personal symbolic processes to abstract mathematical concepts.

Semantic processing of mathematical gestures

Brain and Cognition, 2009

Objective: To examine whether or not university mathematics students semantically process gestures depicting mathematical functions (mathematical gestures) similarly to the way they process action gestures and sentences. Semantic processing was indexed by the N400 effect. Results: The N400 effect elicited by words primed with mathematical gestures (e.g. ''converging" and ''decreasing") was the same in amplitude, latency and topography as that elicited by words primed with action gestures (e.g. drive and lift), and that for terminal words of sentences. Significance and conclusion: Findings provide a within-subject demonstration that the topographies of the gesture N400 effect for both action and mathematical words are indistinguishable from that of the standard language N400 effect. This suggests that mathematical function words are processed by the general language semantic system and do not appear to involve areas involved in other mathematical concepts (e.g. numerosity).