Random2noEnd

People who are blind from birth will gesture when they speak. I always like pointing out this fact when I teach classes on gesture, because it gives us an an interesting perspective on how we learn and use gestures. Until now I’ve mostly cited a 1998 paper from Jana Iverson and Susan Goldin-Meadow that analysed the gestures and speech of young blind people. Not only do blind people gesture, but the frequency and types of gestures they use does not appear to differ greatly from how sighted people gesture. If people learn gesture without ever seeing a gesture (and, most likely, never being shown), then there must be something about learning a language that means you get gestures as a bonus.

Blind people will even gesture when talking to other blind people, and sighted people will gesture when speaking on the phone - so we know that people don’t only gesture when they speak to someone who can see their gestures.

Earlier this year a new paper came out that adds to this story. Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow looked at the gestures of blind speakers of Turkish and English, to see if the *way* they gestured was different to sighted speakers of those languages. Some of the sighted speakers were blindfolded and others left able to see their conversation partner.

Turkish and English were chosen, because it has already been established that speakers of those languages consistently gesture differently when talking about videos of items moving. English speakers will be more likely to show the manner (e.g. ‘rolling’ or bouncing’) and trajectory (e.g. ‘left to right’, ‘downwards’) together in one gesture, and Turkish speakers will show these features as two separate gestures. This reflects the fact that English ‘roll down’ is one verbal clause, while in Turkish the equivalent would be yuvarlanarak iniyor, which translates as two verbs ‘rolling descending’.

Since we know that blind people do gesture, Özçalışkan’s team wanted to figure out if they gestured like other speakers of their language. Did the blind Turkish speakers separate the manner and trajectory of their gestures like their verbs? Did English speakers combine them? Of course, the standard methodology of showing videos wouldn’t work with blind participants, so the researchers built three dimensional models of events for people to feel before they discussed them.

The results showed that blind Turkish speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts, and the same for English speakers. All Turkish speakers gestured significantly differently from all English speakers, regardless of sightedness. This means that these particular gestural patterns are something that’s deeply linked to the grammatical properties of a language, and not something that we learn from looking at other speakers.

References

Jana M. Iverson & Susan Goldin-Meadow. 1998. Why people gesture when they speak. Nature, 396(6708), 228-228.

Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow. 2016. Is Seeing Gesture Necessary to Gesture Like a Native Speaker? Psychological Science, 27(5) 737–747.

Eight years after this original study Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow have a sequel.

The original paper showed that blind and sighted people who speak the same language have similar gestures to represent events. These gestures can’t have been acquired through visual learning, so this was evidence that gesture and speech must be all bound up together in the brain. But there was still a question about how deeply they’re tied together. Perhaps this was something that adults settled into as they got older.

In this new paper, Özçalışkan and team looked at the speech and gesture of blind and sighted Turkish children between the ages of five and ten years old. They used the same methods and targeted the same kind of action verbs and gestures. It’s worth checking out the paper for the frolicking doll dioramas they set up as part of the experiment.

Even the youngest children showed the same kind of gesture patterns as adult Turkish speakers. This means that these kinds of patterns are part of language learning and not something that gets added on top later in life. That is further evidence for the original argument that speech and gesture are a package deal.

It’s so great to see this team continuing to refine and support the original findings.

From the “research highlights” section of the paper:

Gestures, when produced with speech (i.e., co-speech gesture), follow language-specific patterns in event representation in both blind and sighted children.

Gestures, when produced without speech (i.e., silent gesture), do not follow the language-specific patterns in event representation in both blind and sighted children.

Language-specific patterns in speech and co-speech gestures are observable at the same time in blind and sighted children.

The cross-linguistic similarities in silent gestures begin slightly later in blind children than in sighted children.

Citation

Clive Murray White (English/Australian, b.1946)

Assisted Suiseki No: 4 (empty space and moving particles) - Coopers Creek limestone - 17"x 20"x 7" - 2020-2022

Q: "Can you explain what you mean by the title Assisted Suiseki?"

Clive: ". . . I’ve always been fascinated by sloppy work by art historians; two examples of most relevance to me are the assertion that Henry Moore invented the hole and Marcel Duchamp the 'ready-made'.  Neither of these are even remotely correct but the stirring thing for me is that this kind of assumption often fires my imagination: I usually interpret a stone with a hole in as a 'ready-made' Henry Moore - for free!"

"My family comes from Far East Asia and I was, as a child, surrounded by artefacts from Japan, Korea and China.  Being Western trained I realised that art concepts claimed as Western had ongoing 1,000-year-old Chinese, Japanese and Korean precedents, none more important than Gongshi and Suiseki, both meaning Scholar Rocks or “ready-mades”.  So “Suiseki” means “ready-made” and “assisted” refers to Duchamp’s habit of so naming them after he had altered them. The most engaging thing, for me, about the Scholar Rock Suiseki tradition is that the smallish rocks were chosen for their ability to invite the scholars to contemplate the meaning of existence and nature from the comfort of their own desks.  The clearest example of this would be Assisted Suiseki: No 8, where the black limestone is filled with an endless number of fossils - it’s a perfect depiction of a slice of time and also of empty space and moving particles."

www.instagram.com/clivemurraywhite/

for comparison below are some images of traditional Suiseki viewing stones:

Suiseki or scholar’s stone - Furuya type, grey-black stone with white quartz inclusions - rosewood stand - Taisho era, c.1912-26

Delightful Mountains - this mountain stone is a Makko-Ishi from Japan - 20 cm x 6 cm x 9 cm

Ligurian stone has great similarity with Grisly Falls, a well known waterfall in King's Canyon Park, USA

Black Mountain Suiseki

Henry Moore rock

Literally translated 'Suiseki' means waterstone, the stones often represent mountains, waterfalls and other natural scenes. The art of Suiseki involves the collection process, preparation of the stone (though not altering their shape or appearance) and appreciation.

History of Suiseki stones

Suiseki originates from China (called “Gongshi”, or scholar's rocks) and to some extent Korea (called “Suseok”). The art of Suiseki was introduced in Japan by the Chinese Imperial court during the Asuka period (538-710AD). The art became more popular during the Kamakura period (1183-1333AD) as it gained acceptance with the Samurai ruling class. Stone appreciation was introduced in the west when they were displayed at early Bonsai exhibitions.

Suiseki stone classification

The classification and evaluation of Suiseki revolves around their shape, possible markings and subtlety of color. Landscape Suiseki (Sansui keijo-seki): in the form of a mountain, island, waterfall, shore- or coastline, cave, canyon or a plateau. Object stones (Keisho-seki): representing a person, animal, boat, house or bridge. Classification by surface Celestial (Gensho-seki): with patterns resembling the moon, sun or stars. Plant (Kigata-ishi): with patterns picturing flowers, fruits, grasses, forests or even Bonsai. Weather (Tenko-seki): resembling rain, intense sunlight, lightning or snow. Abstract (Chusho-seki): with surfaces similar to animal prints, tangled nets, etc.

Mesopotamian ceramic dish with stylized bird from the medieval city of Samarra, dating back to the 9th century CE. The Pergamon Museum, Berlin, GERMANY.

"The daughter of Zeus, born of his mother Rhea who is also named Demeter, has two eyes in their natural place and two others in her forehead. In addition, she has the face of an animal on the back part of her neck, and horns as well. Hence Rhea, terrified at such a monster for a child, fled from her and withheld her breast [θηλη]. For this reason she is mystically called Athela [Ἀθηλᾶ] though more usually Persephone and Kore." ~ Athenagoras, Pro Christ. 20.2 (OF 82 II, 88 B = Orphic Fragment 58 Otto Kern)

~ full view for hd

“A Lebanese Druze priest wearing religious traditional clothing outside the holy place in the city of Hasbaya, Lebanon, circa 1955.”