Parrill F, Blocton A, Veta P, Lowery M, Schneider A. The Impact of a Human Figure in a Scene on Spatial Descriptions in Speech, Gesture, and Gesture Alone.
JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2020;
49:73-97. [PMID:
31529372 DOI:
10.1007/s10936-019-09672-9]
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Abstract
The presence of a human figure in a scene appears to change how people describe it. About 20% of participants take the human figure's viewpoint (Tversky and Hard in Cognition 110:124-129, 2009. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.10.008). Five exploratory studies compare descriptions of a scene with no person to descriptions of a scene with a person. About 20% of participants are predicted to use the person's point of view in the "person" conditions. Study 1 replicates the original pattern. Study 2 shows that the pattern holds when object/scene are changed, and that the figure's gaze towards/away from the object does not change the pattern. Studies 3 and 4 show the pattern holds when the object has different positions and when it is moving. Study 5 shows the pattern holds when the describer is talking to an interlocutor, in both speech and co-speech gesture, and when the person is using gesture alone. The presence of a human figure in a scene appears to be a robust variable in shaping spatial descriptions.
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