Fotinopoulou, M; (2007) Using non-linguistic communication to investigate event processing: Evidence from drawing production in adults. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This research aimed to investigate aspects of the 'thinking for communication' process, which refers to event conceptualization for the purpose of communication. More particularly, a central aspect of 'thinking for communication' is perspective-taking when communicating about a situation. This was explored by examining participants' foregrounding choices in non-linguistic communication of events and considering how conceptual/perceptual factors and output modality constraints may interact and ultimately affect their foregrounding decisions. The experimental investigation involved 12 participants, with no language/communication impairment, communicating events through the non-linguistic medium of drawing, in response to short video scenes. A detailed statistical and qualitative analysis of the entity drawn first, reflecting foregrounding choices, under different experimental conditions, was conducted. It was found that participants mostly foregrounded the Cause entity, mirroring linguistic communication and thus suggesting that they appreciated the causal structure of the events and were able to identify the roles of the entities. However, it was additionally found that participants relied on the convergence of top-down conceptual factors and bottom-up perceptual factors, to direct their foregrounding decisions. Specifically, they relied on perceptual factors to guide their foregrounding choices, when conceptual cues to causality were less straightforward. This supported previous research which showed that foregrounding choices are dependent on the ease of identification of the Cause entity, which in turn depends on perceptual and conceptual factors, acting together to increase the salience of the Cause entity or acting against each other, making the identification of the Cause entity less clear-cut. Finding consistent patterns in the participants' foregrounding decisions provides a useful point for comparison with individuals with aphasia who frequently face difficulties with the 'language of events'. Conducting this drawing task on people with aphasia and comparing to control data will allow more specific hypotheses to emerge about aspects of the 'thinking for communication' process that are intact and those that may be problematic, thus providing more target-specific therapy. Perceptual/conceptual factors and output-modality constraints, found to affect performance of people with intact language suggests that these factors may have implications for the development of aphasia therapy/assessment materials.

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