Title
Gestures in the TV News reflect mental number space: "Tiny" and "low" numbers.
Abstract
Past research suggests that people think about numbers in terms of multiple spatial mappings. For instance, they think of “more” as “bigger” or “higher” (e.g., Andres et al., 2008; Sell u0026 Kaschak, 2012). Here, we investigate mental number space by looking at naturally occurring co-speech gestures. Using the TV News Archive (archive.org/details/tv), we selected a random sample of 1,320 videos containing the phrases “tiny number,” “huge number,” “high number” and “low number,” of which 314 had associated manual gestures. Our analysis shows that with “tiny number,” speakers produce pinching gestures; with “huge number,” they move their hands outward; with “high numbers,” the palms are oriented and move upward; and with “low numbers,” the palms are oriented and move downward. Speakers did not gesture systematically along the horizontal axis. This work provides new insights into how people’s spatial conceptualizations of numbers shape communicative practice in naturally occurring discourse.
Year
Venue
Field
2015
CogSci
Gesture,Psychology,Cognitive psychology,Multimedia,Linguistics
DocType
Citations 
PageRank 
Conference
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Bodo Winter1234.72
Marcus Perlman241.51
Teenie Matlock311724.50