There will be a departmental talk next Tuesday on 8 Feb (4pm) by Amelia Joy-Marie Yeo. More details are appended below. This talk will be held in Seminar Room B, AS4 (B1-07).

Title: The effect of pointing gestures on spatial memory

Abstract:This talk presents research examining the effect of encoding pointing gesture on location recall and how it interacts with availability of map and type of accompanying speech. In Experiment 1, participants watched a narrator describe spatial locations or non-spatial features of countries, with or without pointing to a map, and were asked to recall those locations. When a map was present, encoding pointing gesture with spatial speech did not cause incremental gain to recall but encoding it with nonspatial speech hindered recall performance. Experiment 2 had the same procedure as Experiment 1 except that the map was not available. In the absence of a map, pointing gesture enhanced location recall regardless of the type of co-occurring speech. These findings provide us with insights into spatial processes of pointing gestures and how it interacts with other sources of spatial information.

Speaker’s Profile:My research currently involves the function of gesture, specifically, how gesture influences memory. My interests also include evolutionary psychology.