Pantomime Strategies: On Regularities in How People Translate Mental Representations into the Gesture Modality

Karin van Nispen	Tilburg University
Mieke van de Sandt-Koenderman	Rotterdam Neurorehabiltation Research (RoNeRes)
Lisette Mol	Tilburg University
Emiel Krahmer	Tilburg University

Abstract

Pantomimes are gestures that occur in absence of speech, which have no conventional meaning. Since their meaning is not conventionalized, the question arises as to what extent they are idiosyncratic. To study this, we collected pantomimes for a standardized set of objects and annotated what representation techniques people used. This resulted in the (to our knowledge) first database of pantomimes. Analyses show that there are regularities in the use of pantomime. That is similar techniques are used for objects across individuals. This shows that pantomime is not fully idiosyncratic. As pantomime is based on people’s mental representation of objects, the observed regularities seem to be a result of intrinsically similar mental representations. Our database gives insight into pantomime 'norms' and could be used as a baseline against which clinical groups (e.g., people with aphasia) can be compared.

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Pantomime Strategies: On Regularities in How People Translate Mental Representations into the Gesture Modality (345 KB)