...Why Do We Gesture When We Speak? Robert M. Krauss Columbia University This is a pre-editing version of a paper published as: Krauss, R.M. (1998). Why do we gesture when we speak? Current Directions in Psychological Science 7, 5459. CD.3 July 30, 2001 Why Do We Gesture When We Speak? Robert M. Krauss1 Columbia University Students of human nature traditionally have considered conversational gestures—unplanned, articulate hand movements that accompany spontaneous speech— to be a medium for conveying semantic information, the visual counterpart of words.2 Over a century ago, Sir Francis Bacon put the relationship of gesture and language in the form of a simple analogy: "As the tongue speaketh to the ear, so the gesture speaketh to the eye" (Bacon, 1891). Although the extent to which gestures serve a communicative function is presently a matter of some controversy,3 there is accumulating evidence that communication is not the only function such gestures serve. Over the past several years my colleagues and I have explored the hypothesis, casually suggested by a remarkably diverse group of writers over the past 60 years, that gestures help speakers formulate coherent speech by aiding in the retrieval of elusive words from lexical memory. How might gesturing affect lexical retrieval? Human memory employs several different formats to represent knowledge, and much of the content of 1Address correspondence to Robert M. Krauss, Department of Psychology, Columbia University...
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...Insignificant gestures By Jo Cannon. Sometimes an experience or a meeting with a person makes a huge impression on your life. They could say something that you would think about for a while. Sometimes you meet someone who leaves a good impression and it might change your life. But what if the change is so big, that you can barely handle it? This story shows a great example of how an impression of another person can change your life, without you realizing it before it’s too late. We get to meet the narrator who was a health officer in Africa but retained as a psychiatrist after he left Africa. In Africa he experienced life and death up close and that made him never want to go back as a doctor, "I retained as a psychiatrist. I never wanted to smell blood again.(…)" He left Africa many years ago, but still suffers from the trauma he experienced there and is medicated to help him sleep. He is not able to forgive himself for the things he did, "If I could peel back time, I would do things differently. But you don't get second chances." He wished he had made other choices, but it was too late. He has given up on drawing because he’s afraid to let his mind free and enjoy the excitement that drawing gave him: "That's why I don't draw anymore - I don't like the places my thoughts go to when set free." He didn’t like the idea of a servant (Celia) in the house, but it came with the house that came with his job. The idea of a servant to him was a symbol of discrimination and exploitation...
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...The meaning of gestures: body language in Brazil [pic] When living in Brazil there's not only the issue of learning the language of Portuguese, there's also the issue of learning the body language Brazil body language Let’s cover Brazil now as our next country and explore their gestures and body language a bit. • When conversing, good eye contact is important. To not do so is considered impolite. • In a marketplace, if a vendor holds his hand out, fingers extended and flips the thumb back and forth it merely means, ‘There isn’t any left; I don’t have any more.’ • A good, warm handshake is the traditional greeting in Brazil. However, the Brazilians show affection easily. People in Brazil will also shake hands when arriving and departing. There may also be a touching of the forearm or elbow, and often a pat on the back. [pic] In this photo U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim shake hands during a meeting in Brazil. Both appear poised, friendly and professionally amicable. • If you are conducting business, be certain to bring a plentiful supply of business cards because these are always exchanged. Also, during business meetings expect to be served (often) small cups of very strong coffee. • Since this is more of a touching society, people stand close together when conversing or when standing in lines. • To add emphasis to a statement, a Brazilian may snap the fingers while whipping...
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...Gesture recognition is a topic in IT with the goal of interpreting human gestures via mathematical algorithms. Gestures can originate from any bodily motion but typically originate from facial or hand movements. Current focuses in the field include emotion recognition from face and hand gestures however the identification and recognition of posture, gait, proxemics, and human behaviors is also the subject of gesture recognition techniques. Although not wearable, the use of gesture recognition is, in fact, only possible through the use of the human body and motion (akin to any other wearable technology). In terms of fitness and health management, gesture recognition software is at the forefront of post injury and post-op physical therapy. Specifically, a company called GestureTek, through their proprietary Interactive Rehabilitation and Exercise System (IREX), “uses immersive video gesture control technology to place patients into virtual sport or gaming environments where they are guided through clinician prescribed therapeutic exercise regimes. The IREX virtual reality environments are specifically designed to rehabilitate the patient in the precise manner recommended by the clinician. The motion of the patient can be monitored and reported to describe functional improvement in the patient’s range of motion, control of motion and balance over the course of their treatment.” Being able to independently monitor progress, whilst also making rehabilitation fun, allows...
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...technology could come to the rescue. Recognising this potential, a lot of growth has been made in the ‘Gesture Recognition Technology’. Now, gestures can be used as a form of input. They will help in bridging the gap between humans and machines. Now, with the advent of this technology, the need of a physical touch on the machine would be eliminated, and the machines would be able to interpret these gestures and operate. Using the concept of gesture recognition, it would be possible to point a finger at the computer screen so that the cursor will move accordingly. This could potentially make the potential input devices such as mouse, keyboard redundant. The report presents the details of the ‘Gesture Recognition Technology’, throws light on the fields where the technology can be applied, provides the technical know-how of the technology- how it works, and discusses the major solution Providers along with the product offerings. The report concludes with the mentioning possible issues which could limit the wide spread of the technology. 2. Gesture Recognition Technology Gesture recognition technology allows users to interact with their devices using simple and natural hand gestures. It utilizes advanced image processing and machine vision algorithms to track a user's hand gestures and convert them into commands. They also allow for detecting natural and intuitive hand gestures such as...
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...International Body Gestures In the first article I read, I found out that a body gesture in the United States could have a totally different meaning in other countries. The United States gesture for “all right” does not mean the same thing in every country. For example, in Japan it means “money”, in France it means “zero”, and in Brazil it means an “unmentionable orifice.” Another interesting body gesture is the way you sit in a chair. If you were in the presence of some Muslims or Thai people you would not want to cross your legs when you sit down. The foot is considered the lowest part of the body, physically as well as spiritually in Middle Eastern countries and Thailand. It is also offending to reach for more food in Pakistan with your left hand, because it is seen as being unclean. The left hand is to wash your private areas in Pakistan. Another body gesture that is unusual is sticking your tongue out at another person. In the United States, sticking your tongue out at another person means your being silly or being “punk’d.” But, in some parts of Tibet, sticking your tongue out at another person is a way of greeting people. One of the most disrespectful body gestures in the United States is spitting on another person. But, if you find yourself at a wedding in Kenya, spitting on the head is a form of blessing. Although, this old tradition is fading away, when Kenyans shake hands the older of the two will spit in his hands before hand. This means he is transferring...
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...Hand Gestures and Cultural Differences COM 200 Instructor Darin Youngs February 12, 2011 Hand Gestures and Cultural Differences In society today we feel that we have a pretty good grasp on what gestures of our body are appropriate and which ones are not. That may be true in our social realms but what happens when we travel to another country? Or when we are surrounded by people of a different culture? It is important to know the habits of cultures you are planning on visiting as a simple “thumbs up” could be a rude and socially unacceptable gesture. We learn that “Common hand gestures…routinely sow confusion in everything from the simplest tourist transaction to moments of great import” according to the article “Hand Gestures” by Boris Kachka. Gestures that we do every day in a warm and inviting way, like waving hello for example, can be misunderstood in the wrong environment. When we wave hello to a friend across the room we may wave our arms back and forth. In many cultures this means “no” and “in India for “come here.”” (Kachka, 2008, p. 112) These are motions that we may do without thinking, an automatic reaction to get a friends attention or to greet them. We as travelers may even read a persons greeting incorrectly. For example, in Greece and Italy making a “beckoning motion” with your hand means hello. When traveling there are many different things that can be misconstrued by those watching you. In Greece, for instance, if you were to hold out...
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...Jo Cannon: Insignificant gestures Is it a possibility that you can care about someone, without even actually knowing them? The narrator, who is also the main character, is described as I through the whole short story. The short story begins with a flashback and we get to know that the narrator has been in Africa as a doctor, and that he has had a traumatic experience. He says that: “I barely recognise the man I was then,” which tells us that he has developed since he was in Africa. In Africa the narrator had to work under miserable circumstances, which is a lot different from the western world. As a reader you get the sense that the narrator is an honest man, who reacts to the principals of what’s right and wrong. When the boyfriend is convicted falsely the narrator seems to have a bad conscience. The first time the narrator talks about his horrifying memories is with the unfamiliar African nurse, which tells us that he is an emotionally reserved person. He hasn’t been able to talk about his feelings. The narrator tells the story in past tense. In general the author uses a lot of describing adjectives and adverbs such as “small shock” and “sinister rustle”. The huge amount of adjectives makes the short story come alive. In the beginning of the text, we hear about something terrible that has occurred to Celia, and the narrator seems affected by it. The text says: “Her face has been with me every day for ten years”, which expresses that the narrator still thinks about...
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...Sciences, 6(8): 492-499, 2012 ISSN 1991-8178 Kinect-based Gesture Password Recognition Mohd Afizi Mohd Shukran, Mohd Suhaili Bin Ariffin Faculty of Science and Defence Technology, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, Aras 6, Bangunan Bistari, Kem Sungai Besi, 57000 Kuala Lumpur. Abstract: Hand gesture password might be the most natural and intuitive way to communicate between people and machines, since it closely mimics how human interact with each other. Its intuitiveness and naturalness have spawned many applications in exploring large and complex data, computer games, virtual reality, health care, etc. Although the market for hand gesture password is huge, building a robust hand gesture recognition system remains a challenging problem for traditional vision-based approaches, which are greatly limited by the quality of the input from optical sensors. In this paper, we use their gesture in order to login or authenticate to the system. And then we introduce a novel method to create a gesture pattern that act as a password. This hand gesture recognition system performs robustly despite variations in hand orientation, scale or articulation. Moreover, it works well in uncontrolled environments with background clusters. Key words: Password Recognition, Authentication, Gesture password INTRODUCTION The advent of relatively cheap image and depth sensors has spurred research in the field of object tracking and gesture recognition. One of the more popular devices used to do this...
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...Developing Guidelines to Design Gestures for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language From the Perspectives of Kinesics and Linguistics Yihan Zhou Seton Hall University Abstract According to kinesics and linguistic theories, this project investigates what parts are involved in making gestures and how gestures carry meanings. A wide range of body parts are involved in making a gesture. According to David Mcneill, the physical movements acquire meaning by iconics, metaphorics, deictics, and beats. The project also discovers an etymological way to connect gestures to Chinese vocabulary. Based on the findings, the project further develops some guidelines to design gestures for teaching Chinese. They are making easy movements, identifying teaching content, making gestures understandable to your students, and applying gestures into teaching. In the end, the project applies the guidelines in designing activities for teaching Chinese pronunciation, vocabulary, character, and culture. Keywords: guidelines, gestures, teaching Chinese, kinesics, linguistics 1. Introduction 2.1 Background Gestures are common body movements: teachers instruct with gestures, referees in soccer game use gestures, people greet each other with gestures. Then what are gestures? Generally speaking, gestures are body movements which accompany and even sometimes replace verbal language. Because of its intimacy with language, it has attracted the people’s attention since Greek and Roman era...
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...LITERATURE REVIEW Topic: An investigation on situation of HUST Technical students using hand gestures in English presentation. Group 5: Bùi Thu Hằng, Đặng Thị Thu Thắm, Nguyễn Thị Hải Yến, Ong Thị Hằng Nowadays, presentation skill recieves more and more attention not only in universities but also in companies and organizations. Many individuals and groups thoroughly studied on this field, especially on hand gestures. Although the literature covers a wide variety of such research, this review focuses on four major themes which emerge repeatedly throughout the literature reviewed. These themes are definition, classification, functions of hand gestures and mistakes while using hand gestures. Although the literature presents these themes in a variety of contexts, this study concentrates on the HUST Technical students. Presentation is an important part in learning as well as in study. The writer defined presentation in “what is presentation?” on skillsyouneed.com website as means of communication which can be adapted to various speaking situations, such as talking to a group, addressing a meeting or briefing a team. Dr. Steve Brooks defined it simpler in “love 2 speak” that presentation is the process of showing and explaining the content of a topic to an audience. In general, presentation shows what you want to talk about a topic or a study in public. In order to get a good presentation, presenters must have presentation skill. Dr. Steve Brooks also stated in his study about the...
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...A CALCULATOR - EVEN MULTIPLE CALCULATORS AT THE SAME TIME. THEY WILL TRAIN YOU TO RECOGNIZE CERTAIN SITUATIONS, AS WELL AS GIVE YOU VALUABLE STATISTICAL ODDS AND POTODDS IMPROVING BOTH ONLINE AND OFFLINE GAMEPLAY. THE MONEY THAT YOU DEPOSIT AT ANY OF THE SUPPORTED POKERROOMS TO GET YOUR FREE LICENCE KEY IS STILL YOURS AND BELONGS TO YOU. IT IS JUST TO VERIFY YOUR IDENTITY AND TO ACTIVATE YOUR POKER ACCOUNT. THE CALCULATORS ARE COMPLETELY FREE……... - ENJOY THE CALCULATOR BODY LANGUAGE How to read others’ thoughts by their gestures ALLAN PEASE is the managing director of a management consultancy company based in Sydney, Australia. He produces books, films, and cassettes that are used by numerous organisations around the world to train personnel in communication skills. He did ten years’ study, interviewing and research before writing BODY LANGUAGE. Overcoming Common Problems BODY LANGUAGE How to read others’ thoughts by their gestures Allan Pease First published 1981 by Camel Publishing Company, Box 1612, North Sydney, 2060, Australia Copyright © Allan Pease 1981 First published March 1984 by Sheldon Press, SPCK Building, Marylebone Road, London NWl 4DU Tenth impression 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system,...
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...ABSTRACT The field of humanoids robotics is widely recognized as the current challenge for robotics research .The humanoid research is an approach to understand and realize the complex real world interactions between a robot, an environment, and a human. The humanoid robotics motivates social interactions such as gesture communication or co-operative tasks in the same context as the physical dynamics. This is essential for three-term interaction, which aims at fusing physical and social interaction at fundamental levels. People naturally express themselves through facial gestures and expressions. Our goal is to build a facial gesture human-computer interface fro use in robot applications. This system does not require special illumination or facial make-up. By using multiple Kalman filters we accurately predict and robustly track facial features. Since we reliably track the face in real-time we are also able to recognize motion gestures of the face. Our system can recognize a large set of gestures (13) ranging from “yes”, ”no” and “may be” to detecting winks, blinks and sleeping. Chapter 1 ROLE OF HUMANOIDS 1. INTRODUCTION.: The field of humanoids robotics, widely recognized as the current challenge for robotics research, is attracting the interest of many research groups worldwide. Important efforts have been devoted to the objective of developing humanoids and impressive results have been produced, from the technological point of view, especially...
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...Allan and Barbara Pease are the internationally renowned experts in human relations and body language, whose 20 million book sales worldwide have turned them into household names. People's body language reveals that what they say is often very different from what they think or feel. It is a scientific fact that people's gestures give away their true intentions. Every day we are confronted by hundreds of different signals that can mean anything from 'That's a great idea' to 'You must be kidding'. And we are all sending out these signals whether we realise it or not. Now, in this authoritative guide written with great humour and insight, you can learn the secrets of body language to give you more confidence and control in any situation — from negotiating a deal to finding the right partner. Discover the techniques that will show you how to interpret gestures, read the underlying thoughts and emotions — and reach the right conclusions. Front cover photo supplied courtesy of Shufunotomo Co., Ltd. 2-9 Kanda Surugadai, Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo, Japan Allan Pease is the world's foremost expert on body language. His book Why Men Don't Listen And Women Can't Read Maps co-authored with wife Barbara, has sold over 10 million copies in 48 languages since its release. Allan travels the world lecturing on human communication, has written 8 other bestselling books and appeared in his own television series which attracted over 100 million viewers. Barbara Pease is CEO of Pease International which...
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...underestimated. It is thought that up to 93% of communication is non-verbal with only 7% being verbal. Body language is thought to make up 55% of non-verbal communication and the tone of voice makes up 38% of non-verbal communication according to the book “Silent Messages” (Mehrabian, 1971), although not everyone agrees with this. According to Phillip Yaffe, author of “The 7% Rule: Fact, Fiction or Misunderstanding”, body language and tone of voice are “ancillary activities” that convey only emphasis or emotion. In his paper Mr. Yaffe makes the argument that the content of the speech is most important and that tone and gestures are “auxiliary, not primary”. For the purpose of this essay though we are going to examine non-verbal communication and how we are perceived by these actions. Let us first look at Kinesics which is the study of body movements and gestures. In the course of a conversation with an individual if that person is making eye contact with us and is smiling how do we feel? For me, I feel that the person is attentive and engaged in what I have to say. They are listening. Where as if that person is looking around and has a scowl on their face my feelings are that they are not listening to me and would frankly rather be somewhere else. If the person is in front of me and standing sideways I can’t help but feel they are just waiting to walk away. A lot of movement may convey nervousness or anxiety i.e. fidgeting with something in your hands or pulling at your...
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