Aslı Özyürek
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 828822 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Aslı Özyürek |
| PRENOMES | Aslı |
| SOBRENOME | Özyürek |
| ASSINATURA | ÖZYÜREK A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4914-2643 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 30 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 159 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1996 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Spatial and social cognition jointly determine multimodal demonstrative reference
All languages in the world have demonstrative terms such as 'this' and 'that' in English, which have traditionally been treated as spatial words. Here we aim to provide experimental evidence that demonstrative choice is jointly determined by spatial considerations (e.g., whether the referent is near or far) and socio-cognitive factors (e.g., the listener's attention focus). We also test whether demonstrative choice varies depending on the speaker…
Action bias in describing object locations by signing children
This study investigates the role of action bias in the acquisition of classifier constructions by deaf children acquiring Turkish Sign Language (TİD). While classifier handshapes are morphologically complex and iconic, deaf children (aged 7–9) were found to prefer handling classifiers (reflecting the actions performed by agents) more than signing adults, even in contexts requiring entity classifiers (reflecting the visual properties of their refe…
First-language acquisition in a multimodal language framework
Children across the world acquire their first language(s) naturally, regardless of typology or modality (e.g. sign or spoken). Various attempts have been made to explain the puzzle of language acquisition using several approaches, trying to understand to what extent it can be explained by what children bring to language-learning situations as well as what they learn from the input and the interactive context. However, most of these approaches con…
Advancing the Multimodal Language Acquisition Framework Through Collaborative Dialogue
Language acquisition unfolds within inherently multimodal contexts, where communication is expressed and perceived through diverse channels embedded in social interactions. For hearing children, this involves integrating speech with gesture; for deaf children, language develops through fully visual modalities. Such observations necessitate a paradigm shift from speech-centric models to a holistic framework that equally values all modalities, whet…
Gesture Reduces Mapping Difficulties in the Development of Spatial Language Depending on the Complexity of Spatial Relations
In spoken languages, children acquire locative terms in a cross‐linguistically stable order. Terms similar in meaning to in and on emerge earlier than those similar to front and behind , followed by left and right . This order has been attributed to the complexity of the relations expressed by different locative terms. An additional possibility is that children may be delayed in expressing certain spatial meanings partly due to difficulties in di…
Gestural and Verbal Evidence of Conceptual Representation Differences in Blind and Sighted Individuals
This preregistered study examined whether visual experience influences conceptual representations by examining both gestural expression and feature listing. Gestures—mostly driven by analog mappings of visuospatial and motoric experiences onto the body—offer a unique window into conceptual representations and provide complementary information not offered by language‐based features, which have been the focus of previous work. Thirty congenitally o…
Sign advantage
Expressing Left-Right relations is challenging for speaking-children. Yet, this challenge was absent for signing-children, possibly due to iconicity in the visual-spatial modality of expression. We investigate whether there is also a modality advantage when speaking-children’s co-speech gestures are considered. Eight-year-old child and adult hearing monolingual Turkish speakers and deaf signers of Turkish-Sign-Language described pictures of objec…
Iconicity and Gesture Jointly Facilitate Learning of Second Language Signs at First Exposure in Hearing Nonsigners
When learning spoken second language (L2), words overlapping in form and meaning with one's native language (L1) help break into the new language. When nonsigning speakers learn a sign language as L2, such overlaps are absent because of the modality differences (L1: speech, L2: sign). In such cases, nonsigning speakers might use iconic form-meaning mappings in signs or their own gestural experience as gateways into the to-be-acquired sign languag…
Word order preference in sign influences speech in hearing bimodal bilinguals but not vice versa
We investigated cross-modal influences between speech and sign in hearing bimodal bilinguals, proficient in a spoken and a sign language, and its consequences on visual attention during message preparation using eye-tracking. We focused on spatial expressions in which sign languages, unlike spoken languages, have a modality-driven preference to mention grounds (big objects) prior to figures (smaller objects). We compared hearing bimodal bilingual…
Speaking and gesturing guide event perception during message conceptualization
Speakers' visual attention to events is guided by linguistic conceptualization of information in spoken language production and in language-specific ways. Does production of language-specific co-speech gestures further guide speakers' visual attention during message preparation? Here, we examine the link between visual attention and multimodal event descriptions in Turkish. Turkish is a verb-framed language where speakers' speech and gesture show…
Individual differences in working memory and semantic fluency predict younger and older adults' multimodal recipient design in an interactive spatial task
Aging appears to impair the ability to adapt speech and gestures based on knowledge shared with an addressee (common ground-based recipient design) in narrative settings. Here, we test whether this extends to spatial settings and is modulated by cognitive abilities. Younger and older adults gave instructions on how to assemble 3D-models from building blocks on six consecutive trials. We induced mutually shared knowledge by either showing speaker …
Aging and working memory modulate the ability to benefit from visible speech and iconic gestures during speech-in-noise comprehension
When comprehending speech-in-noise (SiN), younger and older adults benefit from seeing the speaker’s mouth, i.e. visible speech. Younger adults additionally benefit from manual iconic co-speech gestures. Here, we investigate to what extent younger and older adults benefit from perceiving both visual articulators while comprehending SiN, and whether this is modulated by working memory and inhibitory control. Twenty-eight younger and 28 older adult…
The role of iconicity and simultaneity for efficient communication
Turkish-Dutch bilinguals maintain language-specific reference tracking strategies in elicited narratives
Aim: This paper examines whether second-generation Turkish heritage speakers in the Netherlands follow language-specific patterns of reference tracking in Turkish and Dutch, focusing on discourse status and pragmatic contexts as factors that may modulate the choice of referring expressions (REs), that is, the noun phrase (NP), overt pronoun and null pronoun. Methodology: Two short silent videos were used to elicit narratives from 20 heritage spea…
No effects of modality in development of locative expressions of space in signing and speaking children
Linguistic expressions of locative spatial relations in sign languages are mostly visually motivated representations of space involving mapping of entities and spatial relations between them onto the hands and the signing space. These are also morphologically complex forms. It is debated whether modality-specific aspects of spatial expressions modulate spatial language development differently in signing compared to speaking children. In a picture…
Non-native Listeners Benefit Less from Gestures and Visible Speech than Native Listeners During Degraded Speech Comprehension
Native listeners benefit from both visible speech and iconic gestures to enhance degraded speech comprehension (Drijvers & Ozyürek, 2017). We tested how highly proficient non-native listeners benefit from these visual articulators compared to native listeners. We presented videos of an actress uttering a verb in clear, moderately, or severely degraded speech, while her lips were blurred, visible, or visible and accompanied by a gesture. Our resul…
General- and Language-Specific Factors Influence Reference Tracking in Speech and Gesture in Discourse
n Contains fulltext :\n 207921.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Type of iconicity matters in the vocabulary development of signing children
Recent research on signed as well as spoken language shows that the iconic features of the target language might play a role in language development. Here, we ask further whether different types of iconic depictions modulate children's preferences for certain types of sign-referent links during vocabulary development in sign language. Results from a picture description task indicate that lexical signs with 2 possible variants are used in differen…
Does space structure spatial language
The spatial affordances of the visual modality give rise to a high degree of similarity between sign languages in the spatial domain. This stands in contrast to the vast structural and semantic diversity in linguistic encoding of space found in spoken languages. However, the possibility and nature of linguistic diversity in spatial encoding in sign languages has not been rigorously investigated by systematic crosslinguistic comparison. Here, we c…
Iconicity as a communicative strategy
An empirical investigation of expression of multiple entities in Turkish Sign Language (TİD)
Two Sides of the Same Coin
Gesture and speech are assumed to form an integrated system during language production. Based on this view, we propose the integrated-systems hypothesis, which explains two ways in which gesture and speech are integrated—through mutual and obligatory interactions—in language comprehension. Experiment 1 presented participants with action primes (e.g., someone chopping vegetables) and bimodal speech and gesture targets. Participants related primes …
Development of cross-linguistic variation in speech and gesture
The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific …
Development of interactional discourse markers
Learning to use demonstratives in conversation
Pragmatic development requires the ability to use linguistic forms, along with non-verbal cues, to focus an interlocutor's attention on a referent during conversation. We investigate the development of this ability by examining how the use of demonstratives is learned in Turkish, where a three-way demonstrative system ( bu , şu , o ) obligatorily encodes both distance contrasts (i.e. proximal and distal) and absence or presence of the addressee's…
What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal
Development of cross-linguistic variation in speech and gesture
The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific …
How does linguistic framing of events influence co-speech gestures
What are the relations between linguistic encoding and gestural representations of events during online speaking? The few studies that have been conducted on this topic have yielded somewhat incompatible results with regard to whether and how gestural representations of events change with differences in the preferred semantic and syntactic encoding possibilities of languages. Here we provide large scale semantic, syntactic and temporal analyses o…
Evaluation during the understanding of narratives
Evaluation plays a role in the telling and understanding of narratives, in communicative interaction, emotional understanding, and in psychological well‐being. This article reports a study of evaluation by describing how readers monitor the concerns of characters over the course of a narrative. The main hypothesis is that readers tract the well‐being via the expression of a character's internal states. Reader evaluations were revealed in think al…
Type of iconicity matters in the vocabulary development of signing children
Recent research on signed as well as spoken language shows that the iconic features of the target language might play a role in language development. Here, we ask further whether different types of iconic depictions modulate children's preferences for certain types of sign-referent links during vocabulary development in sign language. Results from a picture description task indicate that lexical signs with 2 possible variants are used in differen…
Development of interactional discourse markers
Iconicity as a communicative strategy
General- and Language-Specific Factors Influence Reference Tracking in Speech and Gesture in Discourse
n Contains fulltext :\n 207921.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Does space structure spatial language
The spatial affordances of the visual modality give rise to a high degree of similarity between sign languages in the spatial domain. This stands in contrast to the vast structural and semantic diversity in linguistic encoding of space found in spoken languages. However, the possibility and nature of linguistic diversity in spatial encoding in sign languages has not been rigorously investigated by systematic crosslinguistic comparison. Here, we c…
An empirical investigation of expression of multiple entities in Turkish Sign Language (TİD)
How children talk about a conversation
This study investigates how children of different ages talk about a conversation that they have witnessed. 48 Turkish children, five, nine and thirteen years in age, saw a televised dialogue between two Sesame Street characters (Bert and Ernie). Afterward, they narrated what they had seen and heard. Their reports were analysed for the development of linguistic devices used to orient their listeners to the relevant properties of a conversational e…
Evaluation during the understanding of narratives
Evaluation plays a role in the telling and understanding of narratives, in communicative interaction, emotional understanding, and in psychological well‐being. This article reports a study of evaluation by describing how readers monitor the concerns of characters over the course of a narrative. The main hypothesis is that readers tract the well‐being via the expression of a character's internal states. Reader evaluations were revealed in think al…
What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal
How does linguistic framing of events influence co-speech gestures?
What are the relations between linguistic encoding and gestural representations of events during online speaking? The few studies that have been conducted on this topic have yielded somewhat incompatible results with regard to whether and how gestural representations of events change with differences in the preferred semantic and syntactic encoding possibilities of languages. Here we provide large scale semantic, syntactic and temporal analyses o…
How does linguistic framing of events influence co-speech gestures
What are the relations between linguistic encoding and gestural representations of events during online speaking? The few studies that have been conducted on this topic have yielded somewhat incompatible results with regard to whether and how gestural representations of events change with differences in the preferred semantic and syntactic encoding possibilities of languages. Here we provide large scale semantic, syntactic and temporal analyses o…
Learning to use demonstratives in conversation
Pragmatic development requires the ability to use linguistic forms, along with non-verbal cues, to focus an interlocutor's attention on a referent during conversation. We investigate the development of this ability by examining how the use of demonstratives is learned in Turkish, where a three-way demonstrative system ( bu , şu , o ) obligatorily encodes both distance contrasts (i.e. proximal and distal) and absence or presence of the addressee's…
Development of interactional discourse markers
Development of cross-linguistic variation in speech and gesture
The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific …
Two Sides of the Same Coin
Gesture and speech are assumed to form an integrated system during language production. Based on this view, we propose the integrated-systems hypothesis, which explains two ways in which gesture and speech are integrated—through mutual and obligatory interactions—in language comprehension. Experiment 1 presented participants with action primes (e.g., someone chopping vegetables) and bimodal speech and gesture targets. Participants related primes …
An empirical investigation of expression of multiple entities in Turkish Sign Language (TİD)
Iconicity as a communicative strategy
Does space structure spatial language
The spatial affordances of the visual modality give rise to a high degree of similarity between sign languages in the spatial domain. This stands in contrast to the vast structural and semantic diversity in linguistic encoding of space found in spoken languages. However, the possibility and nature of linguistic diversity in spatial encoding in sign languages has not been rigorously investigated by systematic crosslinguistic comparison. Here, we c…
Type of iconicity matters in the vocabulary development of signing children
Recent research on signed as well as spoken language shows that the iconic features of the target language might play a role in language development. Here, we ask further whether different types of iconic depictions modulate children's preferences for certain types of sign-referent links during vocabulary development in sign language. Results from a picture description task indicate that lexical signs with 2 possible variants are used in differen…
General- and Language-Specific Factors Influence Reference Tracking in Speech and Gesture in Discourse
n Contains fulltext :\n 207921.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
The role of iconicity and simultaneity for efficient communication
Turkish-Dutch bilinguals maintain language-specific reference tracking strategies in elicited narratives
Aim: This paper examines whether second-generation Turkish heritage speakers in the Netherlands follow language-specific patterns of reference tracking in Turkish and Dutch, focusing on discourse status and pragmatic contexts as factors that may modulate the choice of referring expressions (REs), that is, the noun phrase (NP), overt pronoun and null pronoun. Methodology: Two short silent videos were used to elicit narratives from 20 heritage spea…
No effects of modality in development of locative expressions of space in signing and speaking children
Linguistic expressions of locative spatial relations in sign languages are mostly visually motivated representations of space involving mapping of entities and spatial relations between them onto the hands and the signing space. These are also morphologically complex forms. It is debated whether modality-specific aspects of spatial expressions modulate spatial language development differently in signing compared to speaking children. In a picture…
Non-native Listeners Benefit Less from Gestures and Visible Speech than Native Listeners During Degraded Speech Comprehension
Native listeners benefit from both visible speech and iconic gestures to enhance degraded speech comprehension (Drijvers & Ozyürek, 2017). We tested how highly proficient non-native listeners benefit from these visual articulators compared to native listeners. We presented videos of an actress uttering a verb in clear, moderately, or severely degraded speech, while her lips were blurred, visible, or visible and accompanied by a gesture. Our resul…
Aging and working memory modulate the ability to benefit from visible speech and iconic gestures during speech-in-noise comprehension
When comprehending speech-in-noise (SiN), younger and older adults benefit from seeing the speaker’s mouth, i.e. visible speech. Younger adults additionally benefit from manual iconic co-speech gestures. Here, we investigate to what extent younger and older adults benefit from perceiving both visual articulators while comprehending SiN, and whether this is modulated by working memory and inhibitory control. Twenty-eight younger and 28 older adult…
Speaking and gesturing guide event perception during message conceptualization
Speakers' visual attention to events is guided by linguistic conceptualization of information in spoken language production and in language-specific ways. Does production of language-specific co-speech gestures further guide speakers' visual attention during message preparation? Here, we examine the link between visual attention and multimodal event descriptions in Turkish. Turkish is a verb-framed language where speakers' speech and gesture show…
Individual differences in working memory and semantic fluency predict younger and older adults' multimodal recipient design in an interactive spatial task
Aging appears to impair the ability to adapt speech and gestures based on knowledge shared with an addressee (common ground-based recipient design) in narrative settings. Here, we test whether this extends to spatial settings and is modulated by cognitive abilities. Younger and older adults gave instructions on how to assemble 3D-models from building blocks on six consecutive trials. We induced mutually shared knowledge by either showing speaker …
Word order preference in sign influences speech in hearing bimodal bilinguals but not vice versa
We investigated cross-modal influences between speech and sign in hearing bimodal bilinguals, proficient in a spoken and a sign language, and its consequences on visual attention during message preparation using eye-tracking. We focused on spatial expressions in which sign languages, unlike spoken languages, have a modality-driven preference to mention grounds (big objects) prior to figures (smaller objects). We compared hearing bimodal bilingual…
Sign advantage
Expressing Left-Right relations is challenging for speaking-children. Yet, this challenge was absent for signing-children, possibly due to iconicity in the visual-spatial modality of expression. We investigate whether there is also a modality advantage when speaking-children’s co-speech gestures are considered. Eight-year-old child and adult hearing monolingual Turkish speakers and deaf signers of Turkish-Sign-Language described pictures of objec…
Iconicity and Gesture Jointly Facilitate Learning of Second Language Signs at First Exposure in Hearing Nonsigners
When learning spoken second language (L2), words overlapping in form and meaning with one's native language (L1) help break into the new language. When nonsigning speakers learn a sign language as L2, such overlaps are absent because of the modality differences (L1: speech, L2: sign). In such cases, nonsigning speakers might use iconic form-meaning mappings in signs or their own gestural experience as gateways into the to-be-acquired sign languag…
Action bias in describing object locations by signing children
This study investigates the role of action bias in the acquisition of classifier constructions by deaf children acquiring Turkish Sign Language (TİD). While classifier handshapes are morphologically complex and iconic, deaf children (aged 7–9) were found to prefer handling classifiers (reflecting the actions performed by agents) more than signing adults, even in contexts requiring entity classifiers (reflecting the visual properties of their refe…
Linguistics (25 obras) · Psychology (23 obras) · Hearing Impairment and Communication (22 obras) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (21 obras) · Computer Science (17 obras) · Cognitive psychology (16 obras) · Gesture (16 obras) · Communication (13 obras) · Turkish (13 obras) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (12 obras)