Multimodality and the origin of a novel communication system in face-to-face interaction.

ABSTRACT: Face-to-face communication is multimodal at its core: it consists of a combination of vocal and visual signalling. However, current evidence suggests that, in the absence of an established communication system, visual signalling, especially in the form of visible gesture, is a more powerful form of communication than vocalization and therefore likely to have played a primary role in the emergence of human language. This argument is based on experimental evidence of how vocal and visual modalities (i.e. gesture) are employed to communicate about familiar concepts when participants cannot use their existing languages. To investigate this further, we introduce an experiment where pairs of participants performed a referential communication task in which they described unfamiliar stimuli in ord

SUBMITTER: Macuch Silva V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7029942 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature