Do Children Understand Iconic Gestures About Events as Early as Iconic Gestures About Entities?

Children can understand iconic co-speech gestures that characterize entities by age 3 (Stanfield et al. in J Child Lang 40(2):1–10, 2014; e.g., “I’m drinking” \(+\) tilting hand in C-shape to mouth as if holding a glass). In this study, we ask whether children understand co-speech gestures that characterize events as early as they do so for entities, and if so, whether their understanding is influenced by the patterns of gesture production in their native language. We examined this question by studying native English speaking 3- to 4 year-old children and adults as they completed an iconic co-speech gesture comprehension task involving motion events across two studies. Our results showed that children understood iconic co-speech gestures about events at age 4, marking comprehension of gestures about events one year later than gestures about entities. Our findings also showed that native gesture production patterns influenced children’s comprehension of gestures characterizing such events, with better comprehension for gestures that follow language-specific patterns compared to the ones that do not follow such patterns—particularly for manner of motion. Overall, these results highlight early emerging abilities in gesture comprehension about motion events.     

Iconic memory — an artifact of perceptual reconstruction processes?

Summary Two experiments, using a partial vs. whole report procedure to isolate iconic from short-term memory loss, are reported. In the first experiment 10 Ss had to judge the difference between two line lengths in a display of three pairs of lines (in rows). Results showed no significant variation in d' with cue delay in spite of a medium overall performance, and in contrast to preliminary partial/whole report experiments. To counter the possibility that the short-term memory load was too small in this experiment, a second experiment was performed with displays containing nine instead of three pairs, i.e., three pairs per row. Equivalence of performance for all conditions was about the same as before. This was true for both hit- and false-alarm rates. The results are interpreted as evidence against the view of iconic memory as a high capacity store containing a lot of information. An alternative reconstructive theory is put forward to explain both conventional iconic loss and our results. According to this account, partial report measures processed material rather than reflecting an iconic store of uninterpreted sensory events. Some consequences of this model are discussed in the context of some weak effects in our data; and suggestions are put forward for further investigation of visual processing.The experiments to be reported here were made possible by grant Schu 421/1–2 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The main results of Experiment II have already been reported at the European Conference on Visual Perception at Nordwijkerhout, October 1979. I am indebted to Mrs. R. Ledebur, cand. phil, and Dipl.-Psych. G. Gros who collected the data. I also wish to thank Dr. A. Reeves (Dortmund) for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Dr. P. Wolff (Osnabrück) and two anonymous reviewers contributed valuable suggestions concerning the final draft     

Iconic wonder: Pavel Florensky’s phenomenology of the face

The key focus of this essay is the experience of encountering divine wonder in things. The examination of the divine encounter is staged against the phenomenological backdrop. Specifically, the concept of the divine wonder is taken in its original, Husserlian, definition as Verwunderung and is traced via Levinas and his concept of face (le visage) to the early 20th century Russian philosopher, Pavel Florensky (1882–1943), whose 1922 essay “Iconostasis” approaches divine representation (лuк) in icon painting explicitly and consistently as a phenomenon of wonder. More broadly, by connecting Florensky and his work to the phenomenological project at large, this essay aspires to show that the early 20th century Russian contributions to phenomenological thought go beyond adaptations and simulations of the traditional phenomenological prolegomena toward highly original philosophical encounters.