Work

The relative importance of language, gaze, and gesture in deictic reference.

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: gazing, and/or pointing at the items placed proximally or distally relative to the agent. All three modalities individually affected which of the two objects participants thought the person in the picture was referring to. However, pointing was the dominant cue to referent choice, with demonstratives on their own acting as a relatively weak spatial deictic cue. Overall, the effect of spatial demonstratives (Experiments 1 and 2) and gaze (Experiment 2) on attention to a referent was enhanced when coupled with pointing, both when targeting the distal and proximal positions. The results help to illuminate why spatial deictic communication is usually multimodal, with individual modalities contributing different communicative functions in the act of spatial deixis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition

DOI: 10.1037/xlm0001465

Authors: Gozdem Arikan, Peter Boddy, Kenny R. Coventry

Institution: University of East Anglia

Language: English

Topic: Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies

Subfield: Language and Linguistics

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: University of East Anglia

OpenAlex ID: W4409064701

FWCI: 15.44

Cites:

Cited by: 4

Related to: 10