Past event
Grand Challenge — Visual Signals as Core Components of Face-to-Face Conversation
BST (UK)
Dr Judith Holler on how hand gestures and facial signals contribute to utterance formation and comprehension — arguing that visual signalling is core to human language and facilitates fast, coordinated interaction.
Host
- Jonas Nölle
Speaker
- Judith Holler — MPI for Psycholinguistics & Donders Institute, Radboud University
“Visual signals as core components of face-to-face conversation”
Agenda
- Opening remarks (MOSAIC team) — 1–2 min
- Visual signals as core components of face-to-face conversation (Judith Holler) — 30 min
- Open discussion, structured around themes — 45–60 min
This was the final meeting of the academic year. Dr Judith Holler — Research Group Leader in the Department of Communication in Social Interaction at the MPI in Nijmegen and Associate Professor at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition & Behaviour, Radboud University — presented her research on the integration of visual signals with speech.
Abstract
I focus on the contribution of different visual signals (hand gestures and facial signals in particular) to utterance formation, semantically and pragmatically — in terms of their form and timing, as well as their influence on comprehension in conversational settings. I argue that visual signalling is not only core to human language in providing additional information, but that its presence facilitates fast comprehension and responding in interaction, and dyadic coordination more generally.