Ecological Language: A multimodal approach to language learning and processing

Speaker: Prof. Gabriella Vigliocco, University College London

About Dr Gabriella Vigliocco: Gabriella Vigliocco is prof of psychology at UCL. She obtained her PhD from Trieste and she came to London after having worked at University of Arizona, Wisconsin and MPI for psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. Her work concerns the cognitive and neurobiological bases of human communication.

Abstract:

The ecology of human language is face-to-face interaction comprising cues like prosody, co-speech gestures, eyegaze and mouth movements (among others). Yet, this multimodal context is usually stripped away in behavioural and neuroscientific investigations as dominant paradigms focus on linguistic elements only. Here I question this dominant paradigm and present initial evidence for why we should consider the multimodal context in our study of language learning and processing. First, I will describe how speakers use the multimodal cues in naturalistic dyadic interactions with children and adults. Next, I will provide evidence for the use of (at least some) multimodal cues to support efficient communication. Finally, I will present electrophysiological data showing how these cues are used online by comprehenders.