COMPLETED: Does gestural and verbal redundancy speed reference resolution?
How does the integration of speech and gesture occur in the development of communication? This study investigates the effect of referential redundancy, i.e. giving more information than is required for unique identification of an object across gestural and spoken modalities. We are interested in teasing apart any speeding or slowing effect of these different types of input in addressees, by measuring reaction times for identifying a target referent in three experimental and one control condition.
This first phase of the research will collect and examine data from adults in order to form a comparison group with a sample of 5-year-old children, as we then move to examining the effect of redundant definite descriptions in development. The primary task of RES students is to help with the adult data collection and preparation. Training will be given for all tasks.
Relevant fields of Linguistics:
- First Language Acquisition
- Psycholinguistics
- Experimental Pragmatics
Start Date: 12 November 2012
End Date: 21 December 2012
Hours per Week: 3
Activities to be undertaken by RES Student:
- Recruiting experimental participants using online scheduling tools
- Collecting data in the lab using Presentation (experimental software)
- Preparing data for analysis using Excel
Number of Possible Students: 2
Likely outcomes:
- Expertise in the use of IT packages: Doodle, Presentation, and Excel.
- Experience in psycholinguistic testing procedures, e.g. gaining informed consent, giving instructions, data collection and preparation, troubleshooting problems, and debriefing participants.
- An insight into the data collection phase of the research process.
Students who have questions about this project should contact Cat Davies on [email protected]
If you would like to work on this project, please complete an RES application form by 09/11/12.
If your application is successful, the supervisor will be in touch in due course.