So Wing Chee
Email Address
psyswc@nus.edu.sg
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Publication When speech is ambiguous, gesture steps in: Sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles in early childhood(2010) So, W.C.; Demir, O.E.; Goldin-Meadow, S.; PSYCHOLOGYPublication The natural order of events: How speakers of different languages represent events nonverbally(2008) Goldin-Meadow, S.; Mylander, C.; So, W.C.; Ozyurek, A.; PSYCHOLOGYPublication Iconic gestures prime words.(2011-01) Yap, D.F.; So, W.C.; Yap, J.M.; Tan, Y.Q.; Teoh, R.L.; PSYCHOLOGYUsing a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm, both experiments of the present study investigated the link between the mental representations of iconic gestures and words. Two groups of the participants performed a primed lexical decision task where they had to discriminate between visually presented words and nonwords (e.g., flirp). Word targets (e.g., bird) were preceded by video clips depicting either semantically related (e.g., pair of hands flapping) or semantically unrelated (e.g., drawing a square with both hands) gestures. The duration of gestures was on average 3,500 ms in Experiment 1 but only 1,000 ms in Experiment 2. Significant priming effects were observed in both experiments, with faster response latencies for related gesture-word pairs than unrelated pairs. These results are consistent with the idea of interactions between the gestural and lexical representational systems, such that mere exposure to iconic gestures facilitates the recognition of semantically related words. Copyright © 2010 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.Publication Point to a referent, and say, "what is this?" Gesture as a potential cue to identify referents in a discourse(2012-04) So, W.C.; Lim, J.Y.; PSYCHOLOGYThis study explored whether caregivers' gestures followed the discourse-pragmatic principle of information status of referents (given vs. new) and how their children responded to those gestures when identifying referents. Ten Chinese-speaking and eight English-speaking caregivers were videotaped while interacting spontaneously with their children. Their speech and gestures were coded for referential expressions. Our findings showed that the Chinese-speaking caregivers gestured more often than the English-speaking caregivers but both of the groups gestured more often when asking their children to identify the new referents than the given referents (e.g., pointed to a puzzle while asking "What is this"?). The children were also sensitive to the information status of referents and they relied on the gestures to identify the new referents (but not the given referents). Overall, gesture serves as a potential cue for referential identification in both the caregivers and their children. © Cambridge University Press 2011.Publication Cross-cultural transfer in gesture frequency in Chinese-English bilinguals(2010-12) So, W.C.; PSYCHOLOGYThe purpose of this paper is to examine cross-cultural differences in gesture frequency and the extent to which exposure to two cultures would affect the gesture frequency of bilinguals when speaking in both languages. The Chinesespeaking monolinguals from China, English-speaking monolinguals from America, and Chinese_English bilinguals from Singapore were videotapedwhile retelling two stories, and their speech and gestures were coded. The bilinguals retold the stories twice, once in Mandarin_Chinese and once in English. We looked at both representational (iconic gestures and abstract deictic gestures) and nonrepresentational gestures (speech beats, emblems, and concrete deictic gestures) and calculated the number of gestures per clause for each speaker. The English monolinguals overall produced more representational and nonrepresentational gestures than the Chinese monolinguals, suggesting that American culture is a relatively high-gesture culture and Chinese culture is a relatively lowgesture culture. When speaking in English, the bilinguals resembled the English monolinguals regarding the frequency of both representational and nonrepresentational gestures. When speaking in Mandarin-Chinese, the bilinguals produced more representational gestures than the Chinese monolinguals but more or less the same number of representational gestures as the English monolinguals. In contrast, the bilinguals and the Chinese monolinguals produced similar number of nonrepresentational gestures. Thus, gesture frequency of representational gestures (but not that of nonrepresentational gestures) seems to transfer from English to Chinese, suggesting the closely intertwined relationship of representational gestures and accompanying speech. © 2010 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business.Publication Using the hands to identify who does what to whom: Gesture and speech go hand-in-hand(2009) So, W.C.; Goldin-Meadow, S.; Kita, S.; PSYCHOLOGYPublication Mnemonic effect of iconic gesture and beat gesture in adults and children: Is meaning in gesture important for memory recall?(2012-06) So, W.C.; Sim Chen-Hui, C.; Low Wei-Shan, J.; PSYCHOLOGYAbundant research has shown that encoding meaningful gesture, such as an iconic gesture, enhances memory. This paper asked whether gesture needs to carry meaning to improve memory recall by comparing the mnemonic effect of meaningful (i.e., iconic gestures) and nonmeaningful gestures (i.e., beat gestures). Beat gestures involve simple motoric movement produced along with the rhythm of the speech (e.g., hand with open palm flips outwards). Although beat gesture does not carry any semantic meaning, it serves a meta-cognitive function by marking the parts of speech that the speaker would like to emphasise. It also activates prosodic processing of the accompanying speech. We also asked whether the mnemonic effect of both types of gestures was found in both adults and children. In both experiments adults and 4-5-year-old children watched 3 different videos, each consisted of a list of 10 words (5 words for children), in 3 conditions (words accompanied by iconic gestures, words accompanied by beat gestures, and words not accompanied by gestures) and were asked to recall the words without moving their hands. Not surprisingly, encoding iconic gesture improved memory in both adults and children-they recalled more words when encoding them with iconic gestures than when encoding words alone. Interestingly, encoding beat gestures aided recall in adults, suggesting that both meaningful and nonmeaningful gestures could strengthen their memory. More importantly, adults recalled comparable number of words when encoding them with iconic gestures and beat gestures. However, such mnemonic effect of beat gesture was not found in children, suggesting that young children might not be sensitive to the meta-cognitive aspects of beat gesture. © 2012 Copyright Psychology Press Ltd.Publication Turkish- and English-speaking children display sensitivity to perceptual context in the referring expressions they produce in speech and gesture(2012-07) Demir, Ö.E.; So, W.-C.; Özyürek, A.; Goldin-Meadow, S.; PSYCHOLOGYSpeakers choose a particular expression based on many factors, including availability of the referent in the perceptual context. We examined whether, when expressing referents, monolingual English- and Turkish-speaking children: (1) are sensitive to perceptual context, (2) express this sensitivity in language-specific ways, and (3) use co-speech gestures to specify referents that are underspecified. We also explored the mechanisms underlying children's sensitivity to perceptual context. Children described short vignettes to an experimenter under two conditions: The characters in the vignettes were present in the perceptual context (perceptual context); the characters were absent (no perceptual context). Children routinely used nouns in the no perceptualcontext condition, but shifted to pronouns (English-speaking children) or omitted arguments (Turkish-speaking children) in the perceptualcontext condition. Turkish-speaking children used underspecified referents more frequently than English-speaking children in the perceptualcontext condition; however, they compensated for the difference by using gesture to specify the forms. Gesture thus gives children learning structurally different languages a way to achieve comparable levels of specification while at the same time adhering to the referential expressions dictated by their language. © 2012 Copyright Psychology Press Ltd.Publication Pointing gestures for a robot mediated communication interface(2009) Cabibihan, J.-J.; Ge, S.S.; Nazar, M.; So, W.C.; PSYCHOLOGY