Lecture 3: Iverson Study: Gesture & Speech in Blind & Sighted Children's Spatial Descriptions [test 2]

Question 1

BONUS: which of the following is NOT a line of research done on the support of the universal emotions?

1. research done on animals
2. research done on newborns/infants
3. research done on people who are congenitally blind
4. all of these are

Answer 1

4. all of these are

Question 2

optic flow (one of 3 pieces of info that vision provides us with)

Answer 2

how our body moves in relation to layout of the context around us

Question 3

one of 3 pieces of info that vision provides us with is Updating representations of all of the following EXCEPT:

a. body
b. motion
c. location
d. orientation
e. all of these

Answer 3

e. all of these

Question 4

one of 3 pieces of info that vision provides us with is a method for us to understand the ____ relationships that exist between the self and objects in environment

a. pattern
b. flow
c. spatial
d. representative

Answer 4

c. spatial

Question 5

a path traveled by a blind navigator tends to be…

a. perceived all at once
b. constructed out of segmented inputs

Answer 5

b. constructed out of segmented inputs

Question 6

why are path representations of blind navigators segmented?

Answer 6

have to be constructed bit by bit along the way as the navigator uses auditory, tactile, etc info

Question 7

t/f- in the Iverson study, the routes that sighted and congenitally blind children were asked to describe were from their class to familiar rooms in the school

Answer 7

true

Question 8

children who are blind typically produce co-speech gestures, suggesting…

a. these gestures are their primary means of communication
b. there is a fundamental universal component of our gestural system
c. their communication and processing barely differs from that of sighted children

Answer 8

b. there is a fundamental universal component of our gestural system

Question 9

in the Iverson study, while providing route directions, describe whether the following children used gestures

a. blind
b. sighted
c. blindfolded sighted

Answer 9

blind- no

sighted and blindfolded- yes

Question 10

in the Iverson study, blind children did not use gesturing when giving route directions, while sighted children did. What does this suggest?

Answer 10

blind children rely on different strategies in terms of how they relay route info (eg., sighted participant may say “go down the hall until you reach the gym” and a blind participant may say “go down the hall past rooms 1, 2, 3, 4 and you’ll be at the gym”

Question 11

t/f- blind children represent large spatial layouts in a more segmented and sequential fashion, reducing their reliance upon gestures

Answer 11

true

Question 12

hand gestures represent info in a ____ manner, and speech represents info in a ____ manner. Fill in the blanks and explain

a. sequential, simultaneous
b. simultaneous, sequential

Answer 12

b. simultaneous, sequential

hand gestures- if you gesture shape of a ball, this is perceived simultaneously as one gesture (you are not assessing the different stages of hand movements, but rather looking at the Gestalt of gesture production)
speech- sequential- you hear a phrase word by word, and must understand it word by word to understand the entire meaning

Question 13

t/f- in the Iverson study, since blind children do not gesture during route descriptions since segmented descriptions are not compatible with gesture production, the authors hypothesized that if blind children were given a route description task that does not involve a segmenting strategy, that their gesture production should increase

Answer 13

true

Question 14

t/f- assumption in the Iverson study was that when you segment a lot (strategy shown by blind children in Iverson study), you decrease reliance on gesture production, since you may be adopting a more heavily verbal (sequential) strategy in terms of encoding info

Answer 14

true

Question 15

what was the purpose of providing children with a small scale layout task in the Iverson study?

Answer 15

small scale layout can be simultaneously touched with hand, removing the demands imposed by bodily navigation through large scale spaces

Question 16

BONUS: in the Iverson study, the authors thought blind participants would rely more strongly on a segmenting style to describe _____ scale routes (pick: large or small)

Answer 16

large

Question 17

BONUS: which of the following was NOT one of the predictions of the Iverson study?

Blind participants:
1) They may produce few or no gestures when describing large-scale routes

2) Segmenting may be reduced in small-scale space and the content of blind and sighted children’s verbal descriptions should be similar (since both blind and sighted children now using same manner of encoding info- equalizer of strategy use)
3) Gesture production may be higher among blind children in the small-scale description task than the large-scale route description (since more likely to adopt simultaneous communication in gestural form than segmenting strategy used in speech)
4) All of the above are included in the predictions

Answer 17

4) All of the above are included in the predictions

Question 18

BONUS4: t/f- one limitation of the Iverson study was a small n

Answer 18

true

Question 19

BONUS: t/f- the blindfolded condition was included to provide rough control for additional difficulties that presumably would have been imposed by asking blind participants to perform tasks without vision, and to examine effects of temporary visual deprivation in terms of gesture production

Answer 19

true

Question 20

BONUS: describe the large vs small scale tasks used in the Iverson study

Answer 20

large- going from a CONSTANT point in the school to another location in the school which the participants knew well
small- used small lego spatial environments with a gold chain marking the route that needed to be described by participants

Question 21

BONUS4: t/f- in the Iverson study, during the small scale task, participants were provided with time to familiarize themselves with the model prior to exploring the pathway with the added gold chain, or before describing the path from memory. There was a lot of variability in how long each participant took to become familiar with the environment, leading to a potential confound

Answer 21

true

Question 22

BONUS: t/f- in the Iverson study, both gestures (hand movements) and speech production were used as measures, and in order to control reliability, the authors had a second coder analyze each video, resulting in very high levels of agreement for both words and gestures

Answer 22

true

Question 23

in the Iverson study, when giving route directions (large scale), what was the result?

a. blind participants produced more speech
b. sighted participants produced more speech
c. blind and sighted participants produced equal speech

Answer 23

a. blind participants produced more speech

Question 24

t/f- in the Iverson study, blind participants produced more words than sighted during the small scale task

Answer 24

false- no difference between blind and sighted

Question 25

t/f- blind participants were significantly less likely to use gestures in comparison to sighted participants in the large scale route task, but this effect only occurred when sighted + blindfolded participants were combined together

Answer 25

true

Question 26

which of the following are true of the small-scale results, in terms of gestures?

a. gesture use was higher for all groups, in comparison to large scale route description task (suggests more simultaneous strategy use)
b. frequency of gesturing among blind participants was less than blindfolded + sighted groups put together (but only with marginal significance, p < .09)
c. blind participants gestured more on the small, vs large scale task, showing they may have stronger reliance on simultaneous processing strategy on small scale task
d. all of these are true

Answer 26

d. all of these are true

Question 27

the absence of gesturing among blind participants in the Iverson study was related to the use of a ______ (simultaneous vs segmenting- choose) strategy

Answer 27

segmenting

Question 28

in the Iverson study, among blind and sighted children who DID gesture, info was more likely to be converted in gesture (vs speech) if it pertained to spatial elements such as…(2)

a. direction
b. location
c. timing
d. familiarity

Answer 28

a. direction

b. location

Question 29

BONUS4: The authors of Iverson proved the conclusion that the absence of gesture production was related to the use of a segmenting strategy, especially for the large scale layout. T/f- there are possible alternative explanations- could be differences in terms of recency effect, overall stimuli (eg., small scale routes represent novel stimuli for all participants, and large scale represent v familiar enviros- element of stimuli familiarity can get in the way of interpretation), and they also used realistic (large) and unrealistic (small, lego) enviros

Answer 29

true