Objectification effects in the gesture of blind--论文代写范文精选

毫不夸张地说,有更多比视觉的手势。将回顾一些手势,研究隐喻和失明,为了证明其效用，作为心理表征的证据来源。我认为，盲目的姿态和严重视力受损的人可以带来重要的洞察，发自手势的本质。下面的essay代写范文进行详述。

Introduction 
“When people talk, they gesture. With movements of their hands, speakers indicate size, shape, direction, and distance, lend emphasis to particular words, and highlight essential phrases” (Iverson and Goldin-Meadow 1997). Gestures are primarily understood as communicative hand movements, and it is reasonable to assume that they are learned and used on a visual basis. But, as we have seen in the previous chapter, their function is not limited to communication. We gesture in situations where the interlocutor cannot see our movements: in telephone conversations (Cohen and Harrison 1973; Cohen 1977), when obscured from our interlocutor's view (Alibali et al. 2001), or separated from an audience by a booth located behind their backs during simultaneous interpreting (Mol et al. 2009). Both blind and seeing persons use gesture, and they continue to do so in conversations with an interlocutor whom they know to be blind . It seems that gestures play a role beyond communication. 

A phenomenon called the speech-gesture mismatch can tell a teacher if the student understands a problem even if they are not yet able to explain it in words (Alibali et al. 1993). Quite literally, there is more to gesture than meets the eye. In the course of this chapter I will review a number of studies on gesture, metaphor and blindness in order to demonstrate their usefulness as sources of evidence for mental representation. I will argue that gesture of blind and severely visually impaired persons can bring important insight into the nature of spontaneous gesture because of the minimal influence of cultural transfer on their gesticulation. Then I will present a two part empirical study that I have conducted together with colleagues: Dorota Jaworska and Zuzanna Fleischer. The purpose of the study was to analyse instances of spontaneous gesture of blind and severely visually impaired children and young adults who were asked to describe abstract and concrete concepts. Over the course of 13 months we worked in close cooperation with the Owińska Boarding School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in order to gather experience, teach, and interview students. The data we 126 collected has already been presented during talks and conferences; some preliminary findings have already been published (Jelec et al. 2012).

Why study gestural behaviour of blind and visually impaired persons We have seen that gesture is a source of insight into cognition. Focusing on gesture analysis to draw inferences about the mental representation system forces constraints on the type of gesture analysed. In short, this type of research requires gestures that are indicative of underlying cognitive processes, but minimally influenced by the sociocultural background in which gestural behaviour was acquired. The first condition is satisfied if we choose to analyse co-speech gesture (gesticulation). As indicated in the previous chapter, this type of gesture occurs spontaneously and is a reliable source of information for a variety of non-linguistic cognitive processes (Alibali et al. 1999). 

Gesticulation and discourse are interdependent, and analysis of metaphorical expressions in language and gesture shows that abstract concepts are characterised similarly in both (Cienki 2008). Also, spontaneous gesture does not depend on the physical presence of an interlocutor, on their level of vision, or the interlocutor's access to visual information conveyed in gesture (Iverson and Goldin-Meadow 1997, 2001; Iverson et al. 1998). Second, in order to remove gesture analysis as far as possible from the sociocultural context it is important to find persons whose gesture has been minimally influenced by their environment. Gesture is a universal feature of communication. This is true also in case of people who had reduced opportunities to acquire gesture in a social context, such as the blind and severely visually impaired. 

Although language, learning, and mental representations of blind adults and children have been intensely studied both in Poland (Majewski 1983; Piskorska et al. 2008; Jaworska-Biskup 2009, 2010b, 2010a, 2011), and internationally (McGinnis 1981; Sato et al. 2010; Roch-Levecq 2006; Iverson and Goldin-Meadow 2001) the relationship between language, categorisation and gesture in blindness is a relatively young research topic. By studying gestures of persons who are congenitally blind, severely visually impaired, or those who lost sight at an early age researchers can extricate the cognitive aspect of gesture from its social 127 function. Although this approach requires solving a number of methodological challenges, the authors of this study assume that spontaneous gestures in blindness will be indicative of cognitive processing and dynamic mental representations because they are less dependent on visually transferred cultural tendencies than gestures of their sighted peers.

Language and gesture in typical and atypical development
Children's gestures and language to a large extent develop from their interactions with objects (Bruce et al. 2007). Both deaf and blind children receive fewer information about language than their sighted peers, but they exhibit different learning strategies. Whereas deaf two-year olds perform class consistent behaviours such as sorting toys into categories based on their perceptual qualities, no such tendencies were observed in their blind peers (Dunlea 1989: 61). Class consistent behaviour is a prerequisite for constructing basic categories, and influences language development. This means that blind children are more likely to learn language later. As a result, blind children are more likely to develop mental representations of abstract concepts that are primarily acquired through language, and to develop them later than their sighted peers. Such concepts include two subjects particularly interesting for gesture research: objects and space. Both have been suggested as candidates for the ultimate source domain. However, as I have tried to show in the second and third chapter of the present thesis, objects are preferable for this role because conceptualisation of space is object-dependent. Studies in the language and behaviour of blind children appear to corroborate this view.

Conceptual representations of space There are two opposing theoretical positions regarding the conceptualisation of space in blindness. The Inefficiency Theory posits that congenitally blind people develop concepts and representations of space, but those concepts are inferior to those of the sighted 128 and late blind in that space is conceptualised as a series of paths rather than an overall plane, whereas the Difference Theory proposes that spatial relations in blind persons are functionally equivalent to those of the sighted, but are acquired later and by different means. The latter assumes that, when provided with sufficiently diverse input, visually impaired people develop spatial concepts and representations using their intact senses (Ungar et al. 1996: 247) such as hearing, touch and movement (Millar 1988). 

Although Inefficiency Theory initially received strong empirical support, with research showing that the congenitally blind find it difficult to pinpoint their own position when exploring a new environment (Rieser et al. 1990), researchers increasingly subscribe to the view that the mental representations of a blind child can become equally useful and complex as those of their sighted peers (Piskorska et al. 2008; Jaworska-Biskup 2009). Generally, blind youth acquire spatial competence equivalent to that of the sighted by mid-adolescence (Juurmaa 1973). A number of studies show that the visually impaired perform poorly on spatial competence tests relative to blindfolded sighted participants. However, these results may have been influenced by the choice of experimental stimuli which are highly familiar to the sighted, but less so for the visually impaired participants (Juurmaa 1973). One aspect of space that is important for gestures studies is viewpoint (discussed in section 4.5.2 of the present thesis). 

The two types of viewpoint: observer viewpoint (OVT) and character viewpoint (CVT) are distinguished by the point of reference in space assumed by the speaker/gesturer, which is related to spatial coding strategies. Observer viewpoint is used when gestures show a third person's perspective. Character viewpoint is demonstrated in gestures that are made from the perspective of the agent. Most congenitally blind children assume character viewpoint. They primarily use a spatial coding strategy with reference to their own body, which may be related to the phenomenon known as egocentrism (Heller and Kennedy 1990), or using self as the main point of reference. Sighted children, in contrast, tend to code spatial position and movement using an external frame of reference (Hermelin and O’Connor 1971). 

Visual experience prompts children to attend to external cues (e.g. the interrelationships between locations), which influences viewpoint. Both for sighted blindfolded children and late blinded children display a greater tendency to assume observer viewpoint than theiblind peers. Congenitally blind children tend to neglect external cues, and thus adopt different strategies. Findings from mental imagery tasks provide further support for the argument that visually impaired children can acquire spatial representations which are functionally equivalent to those of sighted people. What is important from the point of view of Objectification Theory, egocentrism is another argument against space in the debate about the ultimate source domain. The difference in understanding space between persons who rely primarily on sight, and those who do not, illustrates that space is not a basic domain in any sense, but rather a function of objects. When congenitally blind persons default to the egocentric perspective they use the self as a reference point for space which extends around it. Although neurotypical persons are able to understand space in relation to any object, it remains a fact that, as Szwedek (2011) pointed out, space is object dependent.

Gesture and the object concept 
Adopting the view that the concept of space fundamentally depends on objects requires a deeper understanding of objects and their importance for typical and atypical development. A study conducted on a number of typically developing children showed that early gestures emerge from two sources: parent-child interaction and experience with objects (Acredolo et al. 1999). Researchers found that the vast majority of gestures represent objects, and actions performed with objects. As shown in the previous chapter, even metaphorical gestures have a concrete referent, and they usually imply the existence of an object. These findings seem to be consistent with Objectification Theory which puts objects, or acquisition of object-like features, at the centre of mental representation development.

Do blind people gesture? 
Gesture is viewed primarily as a means of visual communication, an opinion that is supported by the use of sign languages among deaf speakers who need to rely on vision rather than other communicative media. However, as I attempted to show in the previous chapter, the role of gesture extends far beyond visual communication. Speakers without access to visual information, who have never seen distance, space, or shape coded in gesture do not refrain from spontaneously using gesture in conversation. Congenitally blind speakers gesture despite their lack of a visual model for gesture (Iverson and Goldin-Meadow 1997; McGinnis 1981), even if they know their conversational partner to be blind (Sharkey et al. 2000). Studies show that blind speakers gesture at the same rate as their sighted interlocutors (Iverson and Goldin-Meadow 2001, 1997; Iverson et al. 1998). The types of gesture used by blind speakers are usually limited to those that are spontaneous rather than culturally transmitted, making them ideal informants for cognitive processing studies. 

However, if one decides to analyse gestural behaviour of blind and severely visually impaired persons there are some considerations that need to be taken into account. While blind persons have been found to gesture at a similar rate to sighted people, their gestures do not always look the same as their sighted peers. Visual impairment makes it difficult to monitor the usage of conversational gesture. Congenitally blind persons frequently use atypical gestures because they do not have access to the visual feedback necessary to mirror gestures of others, reinforce socially acceptable gestures, and monitor their own behaviours (Eichel 1977: 128). Congenitally blind persons rarely produce conventional gestures because these gestures are culturally transferred, and this type of learning is largely based on visual information. However, they are able to learn conventional gestures if instructed and use them in appropriate contexts. Blind and visually impaired persons do engage in spontaneous gesticulation, as well as produce adaptor gestures (Magnusson and Karlsson 2008). In view of these considerations it seems that studying co-speech gesture of blind speakers should be a relatively straightforward way to learn about conceptual structure. Nevertheless, gestures of blind 131 persons display a number of characteristics whose nature must be taken into account before drawing premature conclusions.（essay代写)

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