Muscular Activity in the Arm during Lexical Retrieval: Implications for Gesture-Speech Theories

The origin and functions of the hand and arm gestures that accompany speech production are poorly understood. It has been proposed that gestures facilitate lexical retrieval, but little is known about when retrieval is accompanied by gestural activity and how this activity is related to the semantics of the word to be retrieved. Electromyographic (EMG) activity of the dominant forearm was recorded during a retrieval task in which participants tried to identify target words from their definitions. EMG amplitudes were significantly greater for concrete than for abstract words. The relationship between EMG amplitude and other conceptual attributes of the target words was examined. EMG was positively related to a word’s judged spatiality, concreteness, drawability, and manipulability. The implications of these findings for theories of the relation between speech production and gesture are discussed.This experiment was done by the first author under the supervision of the second author in partial completion of the Ph.D. degree at Columbia University. We gratefully acknowledge the advice and comments of Lois Putnam, Robert Remez, James Magnuson, Michele Miozzo, and Robert B. Tallarico, and the assistance of Stephen Krieger, Lauren Walsh, Jennifer Kim, and Jillian White.     

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) intentional communication is not contingent upon food

Studies of great apes have revealed that they use manual gestures and other signals to communicate about distal objects. There is also evidence that chimpanzees modify the types of communicative signals they use depending on the attentional state of a human communicative partner. The majority of previous studies have involved chimpanzees requesting food items from a human experimenter. Here, these same communicative behaviors are reported in chimpanzees requesting a tool from a human observer. In this study, captive chimpanzees were found to gesture, vocalize, and display more often when the experimenter had a tool than when she did not. It was also found that chimpanzees responded differentially based on the attentional state of a human experimenter, and when given the wrong tool persisted in their communicative efforts. Implications for the referential and intentional nature of chimpanzee communicative signaling are discussed.     

The history of Russian psychoanalysis and the problem of its periodisation

The formation and spread of the psychoanalytic teaching of Sigmund Freud and his followers is one of the most significant events in the life of the spirit in the twentieth century. The recognition of this as an historical fact--irrespective of its relation to Freud and his ideas--assumes of course and need to gain a proper understanding and appropriate interpretation of psychoanalysis in all its dimensions. Generally speaking, the history of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic movement has been researched quite fully, although for a variety of reasons and circumstances there are a number of gaps in it. Perhaps the most important of these is the history of Russian psychoanalysis, which has developed within a country where, at the beginning of the century, Freud's works were translated and published in a most effective and representative way, and where psychoanalytic ideas drew a response both from specialists and among the public at large, although in content and inclination the Russian mentality did not at heart suit a psychoanalytical treatment of man and his culture.     

Substance or System as Foundational Metaphor for a Contemporary Christian World View?

Natural scientists increasingly employ the notion of system, i.e. organized groups of individual entities in dynamic interrelation, as a controlling metaphor in their analysis of physical reality, thereby reflecting a new emphasis on ecology and a holistic approach to reality. A.N. Whitehead’s understanding of the reciprocal cause-and-effect relation between constituent actual entities and the governing structure of the “society” to which they belong provides philosophical grounding for this new methodology and removes the danger of regarding systems as completely deterministic rather than open-ended and self-organizing. Likewise, a systems-oriented approach to the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation and Eschatology clears up residual ambiguities in the traditional understanding of those same beliefs.     

Type A behaviour in pre-school children: Interrater reliability, stability over six months and subcomponents

Type A behaviour was measured in 250 boys and 245 girls (ages 3-7) using a Swedish version of Matthews' Youth Test for Health (MYTH). In addition, speech and voice characteristics (speed, loudness, response latency) were measured. Each child was independently rated by two play group leaders and measurements were repeated after a six month interval. Interrater reliability (first session) was 0.76 for both sexes and did not change with the age of the child. Boys obtained significantly (p less than 0.0001) higher scores than girls. Correlations over the six month period were 0.64 and 0.60 (p less than 0.001) for the two possible combinations of different raters and slightly higher (0.75 and 0.68, p less than 0.001) when the same rater was used. Two components of Type A behaviour were identified from a factor analysis of the data: impatience and competitiveness, and they accounted for 57% of the total variance. As for the total scale, boys obtained significantly higher scores than girls on both subscales. Scores on the competitiveness scale increased systematically with age. Speech and voice characteristics correlated significantly with Type A scores (total Type A behaviour: r = 0.50, using different raters, and 0.71, using the same raters, p less than 0.001) and, once again, boys obtained significantly (p less than 0.001) higher scores than girls. The results are in close agreement with the American findings from the original scale. It was concluded that the scale provides a reliable and valid instrument for measuring Type A or Type A-like behaviours in pre-school children.     

西方汉学家葛瑞汉《墨子》研究述评——以墨子十论为重心

本文介绍著名西方汉学家葛瑞汉的墨子研究,主要以＂墨子十论＂为讨论重点。本文第一部分简介葛瑞汉之学术研究概况;本文第二部分分别讨论葛氏提出＂墨分为三＂与十论篇次关系之理论,共有：其一,《非攻上》归属问题与《天志》诸篇关系;其二,《非命》诸篇之错简问题;其三,导致三派分歧的主题研究三大主题,逐一述评葛氏之研究成果,并参照相关文献,检讨其得失所在;本文第三部分则略论葛氏提出的墨家分派及其＂十论＂研究的效用与限制;最后则说明中、西学界治学方法、风格之异同,而吾人若能两者并参,截长补短,则必能双赢。     

Dissociating linguistic and non-linguistic gesture processing: electrophysiological evidence from American Sign Language

A fundamental advance in our understanding of human language would come from a detailed account of how non-linguistic and linguistic manual actions are differentiated in real time by language users. To explore this issue, we targeted the N400, an ERP component known to be sensitive to semantic context. Deaf signers saw 120 American Sign Language sentences, each consisting of a “frame” (a sentence without the last word; e.g. BOY SLEEP IN HIS) followed by a “last item” belonging to one of four categories: a high-close-probability sign (a “semantically reasonable” completion to the sentence; e.g. BED), a low-close-probability sign (a real sign that is nonetheless a “semantically odd” completion to the sentence; e.g. LEMON), a pseudo-sign (phonologically legal but non-lexical form), or a non-linguistic grooming gesture (e.g. the performer scratching her face). We found significant N400-like responses in the incongruent and pseudo-sign contexts, while the gestures elicited a large positivity.     

Social eye gaze modulates processing of speech and co-speech gesture

In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from different modalities during comprehension, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, influence this process. We explored this question by simulating a multi-party communication context in which a speaker alternated her gaze between two recipients. Participants viewed speech-only or speech + gesture object-related messages when being addressed (direct gaze) or unaddressed (gaze averted to other participant). They were then asked to choose which of two object images matched the speaker’s preceding message. Unaddressed recipients responded significantly more slowly than addressees for speech-only utterances. However, perceiving the same speech accompanied by gestures sped unaddressed recipients up to a level identical to that of addressees. That is, when unaddressed recipients’ speech processing suffers, gestures can enhance the comprehension of a speaker’s message. We discuss our findings with respect to two hypotheses attempting to account for how social eye gaze may modulate multi-modal language comprehension.