Co-Speech Gesture Mimicry in the Process of Collaborative Referring During Face-to-Face Dialogue

Mimicry has been observed regarding a range of nonverbal behaviors, but only recently have researchers started to investigate mimicry in co-speech gestures. These gestures are considered to be crucially different from other aspects of nonverbal behavior due to their tight link with speech. This study provides evidence of mimicry in co-speech gestures in face-to-face dialogue, the most common forum of everyday talk. In addition, it offers an analysis of the functions that mimicked co-speech gestures fulfill in the collaborative process of creating a mutually shared understanding of referring expressions. The implications bear on theories of gesture production, research on grounding, and the mechanisms underlying behavioral mimicry.     

The Hypothesis as Dialogue: An Interview With Paolo Bertrando

The following interview was conducted during the 29th Australian Family Therapy Conference, September 29 to October 3, 2008, at The University of Queensland, Australia. Paolo Bertrando, psychiatrist and systemic psychotherapist, was trained in Milan by Gianfranco Ceechin and Lugi Boscolo, with whom he collaborated in the 1990s. His present interests concern the dynamics of systemic therapy, the use of systemic therapy with individuals and the relevance of emotions for systemic practice. Michael Locke works as a consultant in practice development and service delivery systems at Centacare Catholic Family and Community Services, Brisbane. He has worked in both public and community based agencies utilising both systemic and brief therapy orientations with individuals, couples and families.     

文明对话视角下的回儒对话

文明对话是当今世界全球化时代人文社会科学领域中一个崭新的学术论域,也是不同族群、不同信仰群体之间进行平等交流、相互学习、和睦相处的一种人文精神和学术实践;文明对话的提出,是全球化时代社会经济、科技和文化多样性发展的必然需求,同时也是对"文明冲突论"的拨正与回应。近10年来,回儒对话作为文明对话论域中的重要学术论题,已在中国学术语境中产生了积极而深远的影响;对回儒群体及其思想贡献的总结与回顾,是为了更好地阐发其宝贵的历史学价值及其时代意义,为建设和谐美好的世界提供一种具有中国本土经验的精神资源和人文参照。因此,回儒对话的时代价值和意义将是持久而深远的。     

文明对话视角下的回儒对话

文明对话是当今世界全球化时代人文社会科学领域中一个崭新的学术论域,也是不同族群、不同信仰群体之间进行平等交流、相互学习、和睦相处的一种人文精神和学术实践;文明对话的提出,是全球化时代社会经济、科技和文化多样性发展的必然需求,同时也是对“文明冲突论”的拨正与回应。近10年来,回儒对话作为文明对话论域中的重要学术论题,已在中国学术语境中产生了积极而深远的影响;对回儒群体及其思想贡献的总结与回顾,是为了更好地阐发其宝贵的历史学价值及其时代意义,为建设和谐美好的世界提供一种具有中国本土经验的精神资源和人文参照。因此,回儒对话的时代价值和意义将是持久而深远的。     

The Emergence of the Listener to Speaker Component of Naming in Children as a Function of Multiple Exemplar Instruction

We tested the effect of multiple exemplar instruction on the transfer of stimulus function for unfamiliar pictures across listener responses (i.e., matching and pointing) and speaker responses (i.e., pure tacts and impure tacts). Three preschool students, who were 3- and 4-year-old males and did not have the listener to speaker component of the naming repertoire, participated in the experiment. The dependent variable was numbers of correct responses to probe trials of both untaught listener responses (“point to__”) and speaker responses (tact and impure tacts) following mastery of matching responses for two sets of five unfamiliar pictures (Set 1 and Set 3). After each participant mastered matching (e.g., “match Labrador”) for Set 1 pictures they were probed on the three untaught responses to Set 1 words. That is, they were asked to point to Labrador, tact the picture of Labrador, and respond to the picture of a Labrador and the question “What is this?” Next, the participants were taught mastery of all four types of responses using MEI for a second set of five pictures (Set 2) and probed again on the 3 untaught Set 1 responses. Finally, matching responses were taught to mastery for a novel set of pictures (Set 3) and then probed on the three untaught responses. The results showed that untaught speaker responses emerged at 60% to 85% for two participants, and 40%–70% for one participant. We discuss the role of instructional history in the development of the listener to speaker component of naming.     

The Face-to-Face Light Detection Paradigm: A New Methodology for Investigating Visuospatial Attention Across Different Face Regions in Live Face-to-Face Communication Settings

We introduce a novel paradigm for studying the cognitive processes used by listeners within interactive settings. This paradigm places the talker and the listener in the same physical space, creating opportunities for investigations of attention and comprehension processes taking place during interactive discourse situations. An experiment was conducted to compare results from previous research using videotaped stimuli to those obtained within the live face-to-face task paradigm. A headworn apparatus is used to briefly display LEDs on the talker's face in four locations as the talker communicates with the participant. In addition to the primary task of comprehending speeches, participants make a secondary task light detection response. In the present experiment, the talker gave non-emotionally-expressive speeches that were used in past research with videotaped stimuli. Signal detection analysis was employed to determine which areas of the face received the greatest focus of attention. Results replicate previous findings using videotaped methods.     

Emotion Recognition in Nonverbal Face-to-Face Communication

The perception of emotional facial expressions may activate corresponding facial muscles in the receiver, also referred to as facial mimicry. Facial mimicry is highly dependent on the context and type of facial expressions. While previous research almost exclusively investigated mimicry in response to pictures or videos of emotional expressions, studies with a real, face-to-face partner are still rare. Here we compared facial mimicry of angry, happy, and sad expressions and emotion recognition in a dyadic face-to-face setting. In sender-receiver dyads, we recorded facial electromyograms in parallel. Senders communicated to the receivers—with facial expressions only—the emotions felt during specific personal situations in the past, eliciting anger, happiness, or sadness. Receivers mostly mimicked happiness, to a lesser degree, sadness, and anger as the least mimicked emotion. In actor-partner interdependence models we showed that the receivers’ own facial activity influenced their ratings, which increased the agreement between the senders’ and receivers’ ratings for happiness, but not for angry and sad expressions. These results are in line with the Emotion Mimicry in Context View, holding that humans mimic happy expressions according to affiliative intentions. The mimicry of sad expressions is less intense, presumably because it signals empathy and might imply personal costs. Direct anger expressions are mimicked the least, possibly because anger communicates threat and aggression. Taken together, we show that incidental facial mimicry in a face-to-face setting is positively related to the recognition accuracy for non-stereotype happy expressions, supporting the functionality of facial mimicry.     

Gaze Cueing Effect in a Face-to-Face Situation

People are faster to detect a target looked at, rather than ignored or not cued, by another person. This gaze cueing effect (GCE) reflects joint attention processes which play a crucial role in social interactions. To date, GCE has only been measured with on-screen experiments. This only approximates the real situation of joint attention which involves a triadic interaction between oneself, another person, and an external object. Here, we present an innovative experimental setup to investigate GCE in a face-to-face situation. We show a robust GCE, which is of the same size range as in on-screen experiments. This study fosters an ecological approach of joint attention.     

Face-to-Face Interviews and Mailed Questionnaires: The Net Difference in Response Rate

Traditionally, as reflected in methodology textbook reviewsof the survey nonresponse literature, interviews have been thoughtto achieve substantially higher response rates than mailed questionnaires.The paper describes a correlational design for assessing thetypical response difference between these two forms of datacollection, after controls for other factors known to affectsurvey response. Attention is given to change over time in theresponse difference between interviews and questionnaires. Inthe primary data set, the net response due to data collectionamounts to some 7.5 percentage points, in the middle (30–70)range of survey response. The analysis quantifies the declineover time in interview response, and shows mailed questionnairesto be free from decline. A second data set reproduces the essentialfindings.     

Establishing Naming in Typically Developing Two-Year-Old Children as a Function of Multiple Exemplar Speaker and Listener Experiences

Naming is a verbal developmental capability and cusp that allows children to acquire listener and speaker functions without direct instruction (e.g., incidental learning of words for objects). We screened 19 typically developing 2- and 3-year-old children for the presence of Naming for 3-dimensional objects. All 9 3-year-olds had Naming, and 8 of 10 2-year-olds lacked Naming. For the 2-year-old children who lacked Naming, we used multiple-probe designs (2 groups of 4 children) to test the effect of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) across speaker and listener responses on the emergence of Naming. Prior to the MEI, the children could not emit untaught listener or speaker responses following match-to-sample instruction with novel stimuli, during which they had heard the experimenter tact the stimuli. After MEI with a different set of novel stimuli, the children emitted listener and speaker responses when probed with the original stimuli, in the absence of any further instruction with those stimuli. Seven of 8 children acquired the speaker and listener responses of Naming at 83% to 100% accuracy. We discuss the basic and applied science implications.     

Emergent Intraverbal Forms may Occur as a Result of Listener Training for Children with Autism

The purpose of the present study was to assess whether intraverbal behavior, in the form of answers to questions, emerges as a result of listener training for five children diagnosed with autism. Listener responses were targeted and taught using prompting and differential reinforcement. Following successful acquisition of listener responses, the intraverbal form of the response was probed. Data were evaluated via a nonconcurrent multiple-baseline design that included a control series. Results showed listener-to-intraverbal transfer for four of the five participants. One participant required additional teaching that involved tacting the items selected during listener training.

     

Illness and Autobiographical Work: Dialogue as Narrative Destabilization

Illness is an occasion for autobiography, and memoirs of illness present openings to ethical ways of living. This work describes illness memoirs as performative, creating the self they claim as their origin. The self that is claimed is dialogical, and the tension of this dialogue is to include the voices of others without assimilating these voices to one's own. Physician memoirs, a spiritual autobiography, and a web site are presented as examples of dialogical autobiographical work occasioned by illness.     

Playful Seriousness: The Virtue of Eutrapelia in Dialogue

In Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle identified three moral spheres associated with human communication: speaking with decorum, conversation, and social conduct. Each sphere has a corresponding virtue. The virtue in speaking with decorum is truthfulness, the virtue in conversation is eutrapelia (refined, playful wit), and the virtue in social conduct is friendliness. Eutrapelia is gained in part by education and in part by personal experience. One learns to habituate oneself in conversation to avoid the excessive vice of bomolochos and the deficient vice of agroikos. A communicator enacts phronesis to deliberate good communicative choices, relying on one’s awareness of ethics, tact, and ingeniousness. Eutrapelia functions in dialogue to reveal unexpected connections in language, to open new interpretations in linguistic speculation, to negotiate meaning in the play of language, and to potentially shift one’s horizon of understanding about the content under consideration. Enacting eutrapelos as both refined humor and keen insight offers a place of respite that allows one to engage in the playful seriousness that is the hermeneutic work of dialogue.     

Temporal Closeness Promotes Imitation of Meaningful Gestures in Face-to-Face Communication

The present research investigated how temporal distance affects imitation of gestures during a conversation. According to construal level theory, psychological closeness (vs. distance) leads to preference for more pictorial and embodied (vs. symbolic and amodal) forms of communication as well as to greater context sensitivity. We thus hypothesized that people are more sensitive to the contextual meaning of gestures and show more imitation of meaningful (vs. meaningless) gestures when primed with temporal closeness (compared to distance). Participants (N = 91) were assigned to the role of a job interviewer for an internship that would begin in 1 week (vs. in 1 year) and interacted with an ostensible applicant who displayed various meaningful and meaningless gestures. When the internship was to start in 1 week, participants imitated meaningful gestures more often than meaningless gestures. When the internship was to start in 1 year, participants imitated both gesture types equally frequently. This finding indicates that people are more likely to embody verbal statements of an interaction partner when feeling psychologically close to the subject of the conversation.     

Shame and Worker Activism: Emotional Dynamics in Face-to-Face Encounters

Shame – a feeling of social inadequacy and (the anticipation of) public humiliation – may inhibit worker activism. This article discusses the role of shame, as an emotion and a behavioral disposition, in face-to-face confrontations between workers and employers, embedded in an authority structure marked by patron-clientage and personal dependency. It explores how shame may function as an obstacle to face-to-face confrontations and claim-making, and how workers and leftwing activists try to overcome this hurdle.

Teaching Note: Self-Assessment and Dialogue as Tools for Appreciating Diversity

As social work educators continue to examine methods and techniques to provide meaningful knowledge about racism and discrimination, the role of self-assessment and dialogue should also be explored. This teaching note presents a tool for students and educators to use in considering literature discrimination and increasing awareness of multicultural resources. This tool and the related activities may be used for orientation or modified and combined with the variety of mixed media used to engage students in active learning.     

The Effects of Multiple Exemplar Instruction on the Relation Between Listener and Intraverbal Categorization Repertoires

We evaluated the effects of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) on the relation between listener and intraverbal categorization repertoires of six typically developing preschool-age children using a nonconcurrent multiple-probe design across participants. After failing to emit intraverbal categorization responses following listener categorization training, participants were exposed to MEI in the form of alternating response forms (listener and intraverbal) during categorization training with novel stimulus sets. For two participants for whom there was some evidence of emergent intraverbal responding, responding was variable. For the remaining four participants, 32 to 99 MEI trial blocks produced minimal improvement in responding or no emergent responding at all. The results are discussed in terms of Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior and naming theory.