Temporal gestures reveal our metaphorical thinking of time. Less is known about how speakers of different languages encode temporal gestures. We asked 19 adults to explain the meanings of 12 spatial metaphors of time in Turkish sentences. We coded gestures according to the coding scheme of Cooperrider and Nuñez (2009). Individuals produced 237 temporal gestures. There were 162 placing (68.35%), 10 pointing (4.22%), 13 duration-marking (5.49%), 12 bridging (5.06%), 40 animating (16.88%) gestures. We also identified 61 temporal gestures that did not fall into any category in their classification. These gestures depicted the change of the time of an event caused by humans (e.g., to postpone a meeting) with an open hand moving the events along an axis. We termed these as “moving” gestures and suggest that speakers of different languages may vary in their representations of temporal gestures.

Previous research suggests that humans use multimodal information during emotional communication. Only a few studies have investigated how emotional information is presented in non-verbal channels. We examined the role of hand gestures in communicating emotions. In a between-subject design, we analyzed the size, frequency, and type of gestures under encouraged and spontaneous gesturing conditions. Participants (N=36) were asked to describe narratives with emotional content. Preliminary analyses with 18 individuals show that, interestingly, gesture frequencies and gesture use with specific emotional phrases did not differ between groups. Also, there was not a significant difference between the two groups in the types of gestures they produced. However, the gestures in the encouraged condition were significantly bigger in size compared to gestures in the spontaneous condition. These diverse preliminary results suggest that people’s hand gestures during emotional communication should be investigated with all their dimensions instead of focusing on one aspect.

Metaphor comprehension studies have investigated how we process metaphors by pitting conventional metaphors against novel ones. Although these studies have yielded much data on how we comprehend metaphors, no research has examined how we process novel spatial metaphors of time. We constructed a stimuli pool of 80 spatial metaphors of time, 40 were conventional time metaphors, whereas the other 40 were novel spatial metaphors of time evenly distributed among Moving-Ego or Moving-Time perspectives and Path or Manner metaphorical motion in the main verb. Ratings by 40 participants showed that the novel metaphors had more possible interpretations, were more ambiguous, difficult to interpret, less apt, and less conventional. A pilot study with 10 participants showed that these properties of metaphors were linked to metaphor interpretation and temporal gesture production in various ways. This study will continue to investigate how we process and represent novel spatial metaphors of time with more participants.

Human memory retains information related to survival more effectively, termed survival processing effect (SPE). Adaptive memory should also more effectively store reliable information than unreliable information. In an experiment (n=107) we asked whether the SPE depends on the reliability of information encoded by linguistic markers. In Turkish, evidentiality markers encode whether information is gathered firsthand (-miş) or not (-di), and provide cues on source reliability. We found that sentences processed for their relevance to survival were better recalled than those processed for their relevance to moving. This survival processing effect was significant for both direct and indirect evidentiality markers, although it was stronger for direct evidentiality. That SPE persisted in the indirect evidentiality condition suggests survival related information is privileged in encoding even when potentially marked as unreliable by linguistic markers. Thus, the effect of language on memory is not profound but rather computed online.

We investigated recency bias (i.e., choosing the second option among two) of 3- to 5-year-old preschoolers (n=59) in a free order language, Turkish, regarding individual differences in working memory and verbal skills. Children were presented with a decision-making task in which they responded to questions about an imaginary character’s decisions with familiar and unfamiliar objects in 3 word orders (both options at the beginning, both at the end, or first option at the beginning while the second at the end). Children exhibited bias in all word orders. WM skills, not language skills, predicted bias, even after controlling for age. As children aged, their bias decreased for unfamiliar options when both were at the beginning. Recency bias also decreased as children’s WM skills improved when both options were at the beginning. Children are not mindful decision-makers and their WM skills interact with the way questions are asked.

Inference-making is a complex mental process as it involves retrieving prior knowledge and active meaning-making, appropriate for exploring processing automaticity vs. difficulty in different languages. People are prone to falsely recognizing sentences that represent the inferences they made due to gist encoding. To examine whether this process differs for L1 and L2, we presented forty-eight Turkish-English bilingual participants in Turkish, English, and dual-language sentence groups that allowed them to configure objects mentally and draw spatial inferences. Inferred sentences were recognized significantly more than new sentences. We observed this in L1 and L2, but not the dual-language condition. Higher L2 proficiency and lower executive functioning abilities were related to higher false recognition. These results are aligned with the bilingual memory organization, suggesting L2 approaches L1 automaticity with increased proficiency. Lower EF participants might prefer less effortful strategies to process information, such as averaging, abstracting, inferring, and gist extracting.

Online data collection has become a prominent option due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is crucial to understand to what extent online studies can be compared with face-to-face studies, particularly in multimodal language research on which the modes of communication have a crucial effect. This study investigated multimodal communication across face-to-face and videoconferencing settings, focusing on gesture production and speech disfluency in a daily routine description task (N=64). Results suggested that overall disfluency rate was higher for those who communicated via videoconferencing than those who communicated face-to-face. The use of specific disfluency types also differed across the two settings, signaling an interplay between cognitive and communicative strategies. Overall gesture frequency and iconic gesture use were comparable across the two settings. Iconic gesture use negatively predicted the overall disfluency rate, regardless of the setting. Using different contexts is required to understand whether multimodal language differs between face-to-face and online communication.

Observing gestures facilitate listeners’ comprehension, especially for visual-spatial information. However, people differ in how and to what extent they benefit from gestures depending on their visual-spatial abilities. This study examined whether and how spatial skills (i.e., mental rotation) relate to how much listeners benefit from observing gestures. We tested 51 Turkish-speaking adults’ comprehension of spatial relations when the critical spatial information was provided in three different conditions: (1) only in speech (e.g., saying “right” without making any gesture), (2) both in speech and in gesture (saying “right” and gesturing to the right), and (3) only in gesture (saying “here” and gesturing to the right). We found that mental rotation scores were associated with increased accuracy only for speech + gesture (z = 2.37, p = .02) and the gesture-only conditions (z = 2.13, p = .03). These results suggest that visual-spatial cognitive resources might be important for gesture processing.

Gestures facilitate speech production by helping speakers reduce cognitive load. Studies on gesture-speech interaction mostly examined the effect of representational gestures on spatial contexts. However, abstract deictics (e.g., pointing at objects that are not visually present) might also have a role in facilitating cognitive processes. The present study investigated the effect of gestures on disfluency rates by presenting a narrative task in three conditions: spontaneous, restricted, and encouraged gesture use. We found that disfluency rates across three conditions did not significantly differ. The use of abstract deictics in the spontaneous gesture use condition was a significant predictor of disfluency rates in the gesture restricted condition. Results indicate that gestures’ facilitative roles might be manifested differently depending on the context. Abstract deictics might also benefit speakers, especially in a narrative context. Studying abstract deictics can provide new insights on gesture and speech production interaction.

Filled pauses (e.g., um) help speakers to maintain a conversational floor with their listener(s). Considered an advanced form of disfluency; they emerge when children obtain some language competency. Bilinguals might frequently produce filled pauses as they are sensitive to communication. This longitudinal study examined Turkish-English bilingual (N=50) and Turkish monolingual (N=48) children's production of filled pauses in L1-Turkish and L2-English narratives. Children in three age groups were recruited in Time1 (5-,7- and 9-year-olds) and Time2 (6-,8- and 10-year-olds) and were asked to narrate a story from a picture book. Results showed that controlling for L1-Turkish proficiency scores, the filled pause frequency in L1-Turkish narratives increased from Time1 to Time2, both for bilinguals and monolinguals for all age groups. We obtained the same findings for bilingual children's English narratives, controlling for English proficiency. We suggest that filled pauses might stem from metacognitive processes, which become more prominent with age.