Project description
Listening to our hands
When speaking, we often unconsciously use hand gestures in close synchrony with our speech. However, what this temporal coupling between hands and mouth contributes to spoken communication is unknown. The EU-funded HearingHands project proposes that gesture-speech coupling is an audiovisual cue to prosody, potentially influencing the perception of lexical stress (e.g. OBject vs. obJECT in English) and lexical tone (e.g. in tone languages like Mandarin Chinese). This premise will be studied across a set of typologically different languages and across different populations, including individuals with autism who are known to have trouble with spoken prosody. Using such methods as neuroimaging and virtual reality, the communicative role of even the simplest up-and-down hand gestures will be enlightened.
Objective
Human communication in face-to-face conversations is inherently multimodal, combining spoken language with a plethora of multimodal cues including hand gestures. Although most of our understanding of human language comes from unimodal research, the multimodal literature suggests that hand gestures are produced in close synchrony to speech prosody, aligning for instance with stressed syllables in free-stress languages like English. Furthermore, prosody plays a vital role in spoken word recognition in many languages, influencing core cognitive processes involved in speech perception, such as lexical activation, segmentation, and recognition. Consequently, viewing gestural timing as an audiovisual prosody cue raises the possibility that the temporal alignment of hand gestures to speech directly influences what we hear (e.g. distinguishing OBject vs. obJECT). However, research to date has largely overlooked the functional contribution of gestural timing to human communication. Therefore, HearingHands aims to uncover how gesture-speech coupling contributes to audiovisual communication in human interaction. Its objectives are [WP1] to chart the PREVALENCE of the use of gesture-speech coupling as a multimodal prominence cue in production and perception across a typologically diverse set of languages; [WP2] to capture the VARIABILITY in production and perception of gesture-speech coupling in both neurotypical and atypical populations; [WP3] to determine the CONSTRAINTS that govern gestural timing effects in more naturalistic communicative settings. These objectives will be achieved through cross-linguistic comparisons of gesture-speech production and perception, neuroimaging of multimodal integration in autistic and neurotypical individuals, and psychoacoustic tests of gestural timing effects employing eye-tracking and virtual reality. Thus, HearingHands has the potential to revolutionize models of multimodal human communication, delineating how hands help us hear.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities languages and literature linguistics phonetics
- social sciences psychology psycholinguistics
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2021-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
6525 XZ Nijmegen
Netherlands
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