Idiosyncratic Gestures Research Articles

Idiosyncratic gesture use in a mother-infant dyad in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild

One promising method to tackle the question, “In which modality did language evolve?” is by studying the ontogenetic trajectory of signals in human’s closest living relatives, including chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Concerning gestures, current debates centre on four different hypotheses: “phylogenetic ritualization”, “social transmission through imitation”, “ontogenetic ritualization”, and “social negotiation”. These differ in their predictions regarding idiosyncratic gestures, making such occurrences a crucial area of investigation. Here, we describe a novel and potential idiosyncratic behaviour — ‘hand-on-eye’ — which was initially observed in one mother-infant dyad in a community of chimpanzees living in the wild. We systematically investigated the form, sequential organisation, intentionality, usage, function, and distribution of the behaviour over a five-year period. The results showed that ‘hand-on-eye’ was nearly exclusively deployed in a single mother-infant dyad, was accompanied by hallmarks of intentionality, and served to initiate or resume joint dorsal travel. Although the behaviour was observed once in each of three other mother-infant dyads, these lacked the same frequency and hallmarks of intentionality. ‘Hand-on-eye’ thus qualifies as an idiosyncratic gesture. The proposed developmental pathway gives support to both the “ontogenetic ritualization” and “social negotiation” hypotheses. It also stresses the crucial need for longitudinal approaches to tackle developmental processes that are triggered by unique circumstances and unfold over relatively long time windows.

Testing Hypotheses for the Emergence of Gestural Communication in Great and Small Apes (Pan troglodytes, Pongo abelii, Symphalangus syndactylus)

Gestural communication is crucial for primates. However, little is known about how gestural repertoires emerge through development. We conducted behavioural observations on captive apes, including 18 siamangs (Symphalangus syndactylus), 16 Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii), and 19 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), to test different hypotheses for the emergence of gestures (i.e., Phylogenetic Ritualization, Ontogenetic Ritualization, Social Negotiation, and Social Transmission hypotheses). Our results showed little variation in individual gestural repertories, and only one idiosyncratic gesture. Moreover, across subjects (N = 53), repertoire size did not increase with age and social centrality. When comparing repertoires across all possible combinations of conspecifics, including apes in different groups (N=273) for the four groups of siamangs and the two of orangutans, repertoire similarity was higher in dyads of the same group than of different groups, but it also increased with more observational effort and lower age difference between group members. Finally, when comparing repertoires across all dyads of conspecifics in the same group (N = 260), we found no differences in repertoire similarity depending on dyadic relationship quality. Overall, these results provide support for the Phylogenetic Ritualization hypothesis, according to which individuals are endowed with complete gestural repertories from birth. These repertoires are largely similar across individuals and groups, although they may be partially refined through social experiences.

Connecting Free Improvisation Performance and Drumming Gestures Through Digital Wearables.

High-level improvising musicians master idiosyncratic gesture vocabularies that allow them to express themselves in unique ways. The full use of such vocabularies is nevertheless challenged when improvisers incorporate electronics in their performances. To control electronic sounds and effects, they typically use commercial interfaces whose physicality is likely to limit their freedom of movement. Based on Jim Black's descriptions of his ideal digital musical instrument, embodied improvisation gestures, and stage performance constraints, we develop the concept of a modular wearable MIDI interface to closely meet the needs of professional improvisers, rather than proposing a new generic instrument that would require substantial practice to adapt improvisational techniques already acquired. Our research draws upon different bodies of knowledge, from theoretical principles on collaboration and embodiment to wearable interface design, in order to create a digital vest called Track It, Zip It (TIZI) that features two innovative on-body sensors. Allowing for sound control, these sensors are seamlessly integrated with Black's improvisational gesture vocabulary. We then detail the design process of three TIZI prototypes structured by the outcomes of a performance test with Black, a public performance by a novice improviser during the 2017 International Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, and measurements of sensor responses. After commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of the final TIZI prototype, we discuss how our interdisciplinary and collective process involving a world-class improviser at the very center of the design process can provide recommendations to designers who wish to create interfaces better adapted to high-level performers. Finally, we present our goals for the future creation of a wireless version of the vest for a female body based on Diana Policarpo's artistic vision.

Andy Warhol, Sarah Bernhardt, and the “Original Copy”

Abstract Andy Warhol’s portrait of Sarah Bernhardt (1980) simultaneously copies a preexisting photograph and overlays it with idiosyncratic gestures of original invention. The resulting work can be described as an “original copy,” a hybrid category of copying in the pictorial arts, analogous to “cover versions” in popular music. This article outlines the history of prior images related to this Warhol work. It considers how this history compares to those associated with two other renowned portraits of Bernhardt, one by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1879), the other by William Nicholson (1897). These three case studies are used to justify the articulation of two heuristic models—one static and one dynamic—for describing and distinguishing qualitatively different types of copying processes in art world contexts.

Gesture and Vocabulary Learning in a Second Language

When introducing new words in a second language (L2), presenting vocabulary with concurrent gestures might facilitate learners’ recollection of new words. Previous research has suggested that this gestural advantage might hold only for gestures that overlap with the semantics of the words. Dual coding theory predicts that learners should learn input better when multiple sensory routes act as aids to retrieval. Our research replicated and extended previous studies examining the limits of gestures in learning L2 vocabulary. A within‐participant design directly compared the effects of pairing low idiosyncratic gestures (gestures traditionally iconic with word meanings) versus high idiosyncratic gestures (gestures that likely need to be idiosyncratically paired with word meanings) with L2 vocabulary presentation, relative to using no gestures. Results supported dual coding theory: All gestures were helpful if they were not confusable with other to‐be‐learned words and if the number of words presented was limited.Open PracticesThis article has been awarded an Open Data badge. All data are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/4awze. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

Island Encounters in Focus: Photography and the R.L. Stevenson Family

Island Encounters in Focus: Photography and the R.L. Stevenson Family Carla Manfredi (bio) Lloyd [Osbourne] and [Robert] Louis [Stevenson] planted their camera stand in the centre of the village, and walked about to look for good points of view. While they were away a serious-looking man delivered a lecture upon the apparatus, to the evident edification and wonder of the crowd. During his explanation he mimicked both Louis’s and Lloyd’s walk, showing how Lloyd carried the camera, while Louis walked about looking round him. I sat down on a log to wait, when immediately all the women and girls seated themselves on the ground, making me the centre of a half circle and gazing at me with hard, round eyes. —fanny stevenson, The Cruise of the “Janet Nichol”: Among the South Sea Islands In the encounter that unfolds in my epigraph, Fanny Stevenson implies that photography is not always a unidirectional process; rather, the photographic act is located at the intersection between colonial and Indigenous subjects. Fanny’s remarkable anecdote describes her husband, Robert Louis Stevenson, and her son, Lloyd Osbourne, strolling among their prospective Islander subjects on 9 May 1890 during a photography session on Penrhyn Atoll (Tuvalu) in the central Pacific Island region.1 Unexpectedly, the photographers find that they have become spectacles for those whom they wish to photograph: the Islanders’ parody of foreign curiosity undermines the photographers’ seeming authority.2 The playful Islander appropriates the device for the “edification and wonder” (98) of his friends and makes the apparatus, which is designed to see and record, the object of ridicule; likewise, the photographers’ idiosyncratic gestures are cause for amusement. Fanny, too, fails to escape this scrutiny: as she sits on a nearby log, Islander women surround and gaze at her with “hard and round” (98) eyes—unflinching and camera-like. In the following pages, I take Fanny’s account as my starting point to consider how photography might trouble, rather than simply regulate, colonial hierarchies.3 In particular, I examine a selection of photographs taken during the family’s visits to the Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia) and [End Page 67] the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati).4 By the time the Stevensons arrived in the Marquesas in August 1888, there was abundant evidence of depopulation from smallpox and measles. The population decline was compounded by the dissolution of Indigenous political institutions. In 1842, France took possession of the Marquesas, only to abandon the settlement in 1857, and then re-establish control in 1870. In 1888, Stevenson observed the remains of what had once been fierce Indigenous resistance to French authority. He photographed the struggle for local control between a French-appointed chief and one who had been deposed by the colonial authorities. Less than a year later, when the family visited Butaritari Atoll, they encountered a very different sociopolitical situation. Unlike the Marquesas, the Gilbert Islands, although well-known to whaler and commercial traders, were sovereign until 1892, when they became a British protectorate. On Butaritari, where the Stevensons photographed a local dance competition, Stevenson believed that he was witnessing the last vestiges of a society that, he predicted, would vanish in a decade. My case studies, therefore, consider how Moipu, a dispossessed Marquesan chief, reasserted his political standing by posing for the Stevensons’ camera, and how a group of dancers on Butaritari inadvertently transformed what otherwise could have been a straightforward act of photography into a complex exchange of gazes and subject positions. These photographs frame the stakes of my central argument: that the historical and local specificities of colonial impact on Pacific societies unsettle the presumption that “colonial photography” is a consistent and uniform object of study. In fact, specific photographic acts highlight the daily mundane (but no less fraught) negotiations between the individuals who stood before and behind the lens. My goal is not to rehabilitate the racist ideologies that motivated nineteenth-century colonial photography but rather to shed light on those moments during which Islanders influenced the outcome of the photographic event in which they were involved and thus shaped colonial perceptions. This interest in how Islanders participated in photography aligns with critical understandings of the medium’s potential...

The ontogenetic ritualization of bonobo gestures

Great apes communicate with gestures in flexible ways. Based on several lines of evidence, Tomasello and colleagues have posited that many of these gestures are learned via ontogenetic ritualization-a process of mutual anticipation in which particular social behaviors come to function as intentional communicative signals. Recently, Byrne and colleagues have argued that all great ape gestures are basically innate. In the current study, for the first time, we attempted to observe the process of ontogenetic ritualization as it unfolds over time. We focused on one communicative function between bonobo mothers and infants: initiation of "carries" for joint travel. We observed 1,173 carries in ten mother-infant dyads. These were initiated by nine different gesture types, with mothers and infants using many different gestures in ways that reflected their different roles in the carry interaction. There was also a fair amount of variability among the different dyads, including one idiosyncratic gesture used by one infant. This gestural variation could not be attributed to sampling effects alone. These findings suggest that ontogenetic ritualization plays an important role in the origin of at least some great ape gestures.

Idiosyncratic gesture use in atypical language development, and its interaction with speech rhythm, word juncture, syntax, pragmatics and discourse: a case study

Very little is known about the use of gesture by children with developmental language disorders (DLDs). This case study of ‘Lucy’, a child aged 4;10 with a DLD, expands on what is known and in particular focuses on a type of idiosyncratic “rhythmic gesture” (RG) not previously reported. A fine-grained qualitative analysis was carried out of video recordings of Lucy in conversation with the first author. This revealed that Lucy's RG was closely integrated in complex ways with her use of other gesture types, speech rhythm, word juncture, syntax, pragmatics, discourse, visual processing and processing demands generally. Indeed, the only satisfactory way to explain it was as a partial byproduct of such interactions. These findings support the theoretical accounts of gesture which see it as just one component of a multimodal, integrated signalling system (e.g. Goldin-Meadow, S. (2000). Beyond words: The importance of gesture to researchers and learners. Child Development, 71(1), 231–239), and emergentist accounts of communication impairment which regard compensatory adaptation as integral (e.g. Perkins, M. R. (2007). Pragmatic Impairment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.).

A Functional Analysis of Gestural Behaviors Emitted by Young Children With Severe Developmental Disabilities

Many children with severe developmental disabilities emit idiosyncratic gestures that may function as verbal operants (Sigafoos et al., 2000). This study examined the effectiveness of a functional analysis methodology to identify the variables responsible for gestures emitted by 2 young children with severe developmental disabilities. Potential verbal operants for each participant were functionally analyzed using a multi-element design. Results indicate that gestures were maintained by access to tangible items or the delivery of information about novel stimuli. This study extends the use of functional analysis to identify conditions under which children with developmental disabilities emit gestural verbal behavior.

Gestures Expressed by Children who are Congenitally Deaf-Blind: Topography, Rate, and Function

This descriptive study examined the topography, rate, and function of gestures expressed by seven children who are congenitally deaf-blind. Participants expressed a total of 44 conventional and idiosyncratic gestures. They expressed 6–13 communicative functions through gestures and 7 functions through a single type of gesture. They also expressed idiosyncratic gestures and used specific gestures for functions other than those that are typically associated with those gestures.

Sincerely Dancing: Bill T. Jones's Sleight-of-Hand

On a rainy night in January 2002, I took a train uptown to meet a friend outside Lincoln Center. After a strange autumn, when no performance seemed as compelling as the dramas unfolding on New York City streets, the theatres were suddenly full again and it was with a certain amount of relief that a crowd gathered to see the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in concert with the Chamber Music Society. Previews in the Village Voice and the New York Times had been clear about what we would see: after years of anger and politics, wrote one journalist, Jones was reported to be searching [...] for beauty (in Perron 2002:B6; see also Jowitt 2002, and Greskovic 2002). These words became a road map to understanding Jones's new work, repeated in various publications and ostensibly taken at face value. Yet, who would argue that earlier and controversial works like Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin or Still/ Here were not beautiful? Nevertheless, his often-quoted perspective became the reigning lens through which to approach the new material. Arguably the most articulate choreographer of this generation, Jones wields the English language as fiercely as he does dance and gesture. His words have come to us in the countless interviews, lectures, and published writings he has offered over a career spanning 25 years, as well as in his consistent use of text in his performances. Fueled in part by the necessity of response to the critical reaction his work has compelled; in part by his interest and immersion in performance art as distinct from dance; and in part by a unique commitment to grappling with the history of the body and to dancing the discourses of power as they play out in America, Jones talks. And, in each instance, these words constitute an equally significant performance field forJones. Yet, for viewers, they have posed an enormous challenge to move with facility between the familiar and presumedly legible realm of spoken language and the more enigmatic realm of the moving, dancing body. In the case of the Lincoln Center performance, what did we see? The night began with Verbum, a beautiful if banal dance set to Beethoven's String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135. Eight dancers performed idiosyncratic gestures alongside the classic extensions, leaps, and falls of a ballet/modern hybrid. Dressed in silver, they moved through and around a silver set designed by Bjorn Amelan, which consisted of three large cutouts that appeared alternately as portals or ciphers, hearts or women's genitalia. The dancing was lovely, and abstract. There was a renewed engagement with contact improv, a foundational technique forJones from his college

Gestural communication in young gorillas (Gorilla gorilla): gestural repertoire, learning, and use.

In the present study we investigated the gestural communication of gorillas (Gorilla gorilla). The subjects were 13 gorillas (1-6 years old) living in two different groups in captivity. Our goal was to compile the gestural repertoire of subadult gorillas, with a special focus on processes of social cognition, including attention to individual and developmental variability, group variability, and flexibility of use. Thirty-three different gestures (six auditory, 11 tactile, and 16 visual gestures) were recorded. We found idiosyncratic gestures, individual differences, and similar degrees of concordance between and within groups, as well as some group-specific gestures. These results provide evidence that ontogenetic ritualization is the main learning process involved, but some form of social learning may also be responsible for the acquisition of special gestures. The present study establishes that gorillas have a multifaceted gestural repertoire, characterized by a great deal of flexibility with accommodations to various communicative circumstances, including the attentional state of the recipient. The possibility of assigning Seyfarth and Cheney's [1997] model for nonhuman primate vocal development to the development of nonhuman primate gestural communication is discussed.

Dracula's Teeth Syndrome

To describe a patient with facial pain, ipsilateral facial dystonia, and phantom supernumerary teeth, beginning after resection of hypertrophic gums. She had familial sensorineural deafness. Atypical cranial dystonia subsequent to dental procedures is associated with facial pain, dysesthesias, or phantom phenomena, but not with phantom supernumerary teeth. Patients with migraine are susceptible to experience cephalic phantom phenomena after dental procedures. Wynne syndrome is a hereditary autosomal dominant disorder characterized by congenital sensorineural deafness and supernumerary teeth. Clinical examination, computerized tomography of paranasal sinuses and facial bones, magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, cranial electrophysiological testing, and electroencephalogram. A 52-year-old woman with history of migraine without aura for 40 years exhibited focal right facial involuntary tonic contracture accompanying chronic severe pain over the same area after gum resection. She reported a daily sensation of having two extra upper canine teeth pressing on her tongue, simulating vampire's ("Dracula's") teeth. She had high-frequency bilateral sensorineural deafness. Her computerized tomography studies, brain magnetic resonance imaging, and cranial electrophysiological testing were normal. This patient with chronic migraine had atypical cranial dystonia beginning after a dental procedure. Her dystonia was complicated by the unusual phenomenon of phantom supernumerary teeth. This condition may be misdiagnosed as atypical or psychogenic facial pain when facial dystonia is localized or subtle and is, therefore, confused with an idiosyncratic gesture or habitual spasm. Her signs and symptoms are reminiscent of Wynne syndrome.

From Here and Now to There and Then: The Development of Displaced Reference in Homesign and English

An essential function of human language is the ability to refer to information that is spatially and temporally displaced from the location of the speaker and the listener, that is, displaced reference. This article describes the development of this function in 4 deaf children who were not exposed to a usable conventional language model and communicated via idiosyncratic gesture systems, called homesign, and in 18 hearing children who were acquiring English as a native language. Although the deaf children referred to the nonpresent much less frequently and at later ages than the hearing children, both groups followed a similar developmental path, adding increasingly abstract categories of displaced reference to their repertoires in the same sequence. Caregivers in both groups infrequently initiated displaced reference, except with respect to communication about past events. Despite the absence of a shared linguistic code, the deaf children succeeded in evoking the non-present by generating novel gestures, by modifying the context of conventional gestures, and by pragmatic means. The findings indicate that a conventional language model is not essential for children to be able to extend their communication beyond the here and now.

The learning and use of gestural signals by young chimpanzees: A trans-generational study

Observations of chimpanzee gestural communication are reported. The observations represent the third longitudinal time point of an ongoing study of the Yerkes Primate Center Field Station chimpanzee group. In contrast to observations at the first two time points, the current observations are of a new generation of infants and juveniles. There were two questions. The first concerned how young chimpanzees used their gestures, with special focus on the flexibility or intentionality displayed. It was found that youngsters quite often used the same gesture in different contexts, and different gestures in the same context. In addition, they sometimes used gestures in combinations in a single social encounter, these combinations did not convey intentions that could not be conveyed by the component gestures, however. It was also found that individuals adjusted their choice of signals depending on the attentional state of the recipient. The second question was how chimpanzees acquired their gestural signals. In general, it was found that there was little consistency in the use of gestures among individuals, especially for non-play gestures, with much individual variability both within and across generations. There were also a number of idiosyncratic gestures used by single individuals at each time point. It was concluded from these results that youngsters were not imitatively learning their communicatory gestures from conspecifics, but rather that they were individually conventionalizing them with each other. Implications of these findings for the understanding of chimpanzee communication and social learning are discussed.

Assessing choice making among children with multiple disabilities.

Some learners with multiple disabilities display idiosyncratic gestures that are interpreted as a means of making choices. In the present study, we assessed the validity of idiosyncratic choice-making behaviors of 3 children with multiple disabilities. Opportunities for each child to choose between food and drink were provided under two conditions. In one condition, the children were given the food or drink item corresponding to their prior choice. In the other condition, the teacher delivered the item opposite to that chosen. It was reasoned that valid choice-making behaviors would be reflected in a greater tendency to accept the chosen item and refuse the unchosen item. Direct observations revealed all children consistently indicated choices during both conditions. Choices of both the food and drink items were made by all 3 children. A reversal design demonstrated that acts of refusal were more frequent when choices were followed by delivery of the item opposite to that chosen. Similar assessment procedures may be effective in determining the function of idiosyncratic gestures exhibited by persons with multiple disabilities. For children lacking such skills, intervention to teach valid choice-making behaviors may be needed to complement assessment procedures.