Anita Slonimska and Sharice Clough at MMSYM 2024

^{_{Photo by Alex Lowles Photography}}

Simultaneity in iconic two-handed gestures: a communicative strategy for children           

^{_{Authors: Anita Slonimska, Alessia Giulimondi, Emanuela Campisi, & Asli Ozyurek}}

In face-to-face communication, speakers adapt their multimodal utterances (speech + gesture) to fit the informational needs of their addressees. Research has shown that Italian speakers use more iconic gestures, particularly two-handed gestures, when speaking to children compared to adults, suggesting this as a strategy to enhance the informativeness of their message (Campisi & Özyürek, 2013; Campisi et al., 2023). However, it remained unclear whether two-handed gestures actually convey more information when addressed to children. Sign language studies show that signers use multiplebody articulators, like two hands, to efficiently encode several semantic elements simultaneously (Slonimska et al., 2020, 2021). We hypothesized that speakers may use a similar strategy to increase informativeness in their descriptions, with two-handed gestures representing more semantic elements for children. To test our hypothesis we analyzed iconic two-handed gestures produced by 16 native Italian adults explaining a board game to a child (9-10 years old) and another adult. Results showed that speakers increase the informativeness of their two-handed gestures for children by not only simultaneously depicting multiple elements of the game but also their spatial relationships. This research extends our understanding of simultaneity, showing that it may be used as a communicative strategy not only in sign but also in spoken languages as a tool to increase the informativeness of the description for children.

^{_{Photo by Alex Lowles Photography}}

Spatial Narratives from Remote and Recent Memory in Individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease and Healthy Older Adults: A Multimodal and Kinematic Perspective

We compared the number and type of visuospatial details that participants with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Healthy Older Adults (HOA) produced when describing spatial layouts from remote memory (their childhood) and recent memory (theircurrent living situation). The findings suggest that multimodal language production is related to the richness and integrity of a speaker’s memory representations. We should this in a between-group comparison, where individuals with AD produced impoverished visuospatial details across modalities compared to the HOA group, and in a within-group comparison, where HOAs produced impoverished visuospatial details across modalities in the remote memory compared to recent memory condition. Ongoing analyses examine differences in how the two groups utilize physical space in their spatial narratives using motion tracking, providing novel insights into the influence of memory disruption on spatial communication in healthy and disordered aging.

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