The Role of Representational Gestures and Speech Synchronicity in Auditory Input by L2 and L1 Speakers.

Speech and gesture are two integrated and temporally coordinated systems. Manual gestures can help second language (L2) speakers with vocabulary learning and word retrieval. However, it is still under-investigated whether the synchronisation of speech and gesture has a role in helping listeners compensate for the difficulties in processing L2 aural information.

Compositionality in the language of emotion.

Emotions are signaled by complex arrays of face and body actions. The main point of contention in contemporary treatments is whether these arrays are discrete, holistic constellations reflecting emotion categories, or whether they are compositional-comprised of smaller components, each of which contributes some aspect of emotion to the complex whole. We address this question by investigating spontaneous face and body displays of athletes and place it in the wider context of human communicative signals and, in particular, of language.

The effect of linguistic and visual salience in visual world studies.

Research using the visual world paradigm has demonstrated that visual input has a rapid effect on language interpretation tasks such as reference resolution and, conversely, that linguistic material-including verbs, prepositions and adjectives-can influence fixations to potential referents. More recent research has started to explore how this effect of linguistic input on fixations is mediated by properties of the visual stimulus, in particular by visual salience. In the present study we further explored the role of salience in the visual world paradigm manipulating language-driven salience and visual salience.

(Non)cooperative dialogues: the role of emotions.

Objective: The effect of emotion on (non)cooperation in unscripted, ecological communication is investigated.

Background: The participants in an interaction are generally cooperative in that, for instance, they tend to reduce the chance of misunderstandings in communication. However, it is also clear that cooperation is not complete.