Gesturing integrates top-down and bottom-up information: Joint effects of speakers' expectations and addressees' feedback

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna K. Kuhlen ◽  
Alexia Galati ◽  
Susan E. Brennano
Keyword(s):  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Informational Needs ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Joint Effects

AbstractSpeakers adapt their speech based on both prior expectations and incoming cues about their addressees' informational needs (Kuhlen and Brennan 2010). Here, we investigate whether top-down information, such as speakers' expectations about addressees' attentiveness, and bottom-up cues, such as addressees' feedback during conversation, also influence speakers' gestures. In 39 dyads, addressees were either attentive when speakers told a joke or else distracted by a second task, while speakers expected addressees to be either attentive or distracted. Independently of adjustments in speech, both speakers' expectations and addressees' feedback shaped quantitative and qualitative aspects of gesturing. Speakers gestured more frequently when their prior expectations matched addressees' actual behavior. Moreover, speakers with attentive addressees gestured more in the periphery of gesture space when they expected addressees to be attentive. These systematic adjustments in gesturing suggest that speakers flexibly adapt to their addressees by integrating bottom-up cues available during the interaction in light of attributions made from top-down expectations. That these sources of information lead to adjustments patterning similarly in speech and gesture informs theoretical frameworks of how different modalities are deployed and coordinated in dialogue.

Top-Down Predictions Determine Perceptions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin V. Butz ◽  
Esther F. Kutter
Keyword(s):  
Graphical Models ◽  
Information Integration ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Generative Models ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Brain

While bottom-up visual processing is important, the brain integrates this information with top-down, generative expectations from very early on in the visual processing hierarchy. Indeed, our brain should not be viewed as a classification system, but rather as a generative system, which perceives something by integrating sensory evidence with the available, learned, predictive knowledge about that thing. The involved generative models continuously produce expectations over time, across space, and from abstracted encodings to more concrete encodings. Bayesian information processing is the key to understand how information integration must work computationally – at least in approximation – also in the brain. Bayesian networks in the form of graphical models allow the modularization of information and the factorization of interactions, which can strongly improve the efficiency of generative models. The resulting generative models essentially produce state estimations in the form of probability densities, which are very well-suited to integrate multiple sources of information, including top-down and bottom-up ones. A hierarchical neural visual processing architecture illustrates this point even further. Finally, some well-known visual illusions are shown and the perceptions are explained by means of generative, information integrating, perceptual processes, which in all cases combine top-down prior knowledge and expectations about objects and environments with the available, bottom-up visual information.

Voice and Mirroring in SLA: Top-Down Pedagogy for L2 Pronunciation Instruction

RELC Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 003368822095391
Author(s):  
Darren LaScotte ◽  
Colleen Meyers ◽  
Elaine Tarone
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
International Teaching Assistant ◽  
Pronunciation Instruction ◽  
International Teaching ◽  
Instructional Goal ◽  
L2 Pronunciation

There are two broad approaches to the research and teaching of second-language (L2) pronunciation—‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’—which roughly align with structural and communicative approaches to language teaching. A bottom-up approach, explicitly focusing on de-contextualised linguistic forms, is structuralist and predominated in the second half of the 20th century; a top-down approach to L2 pronunciation takes a more communicative orientation, defining the instructional goal not as acquiring a native-speaker accent, but rather as ‘intelligibility.’ In consideration of this pronunciation goal (i.e. intelligibility) and recent L2 acquisition theoretical frameworks emphasising the role of social and contextual factors in shaping interlanguage (IL) systems, we argue that a top-down approach is paramount to L2 pronunciation instruction. Drawing on variationist research on IL phonology and a brief recount of International Teaching Assistant pronunciation course programs in the US, we present the Mirroring Project as an effective top-down pedagogical approach for L2 pronunciation instruction.

scholarly journals Information integration in modulation of pragmatic inferences during online language comprehension

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Anna Ryskin ◽  
chigusa kurumada ◽  
Sarah Brown-Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Information Integration ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Anticipatory Eye Movements ◽  
Distributional Information ◽  
Scalar Adjectives

Upon hearing a scalar adjective in a definite referring expression such as “the big…,” listeners typically make anticipatory eye movements to an item in a contrast set, such as a big glass in the context of a smaller glass. Recent studies have suggested that this rapid, contrastive interpretation of scalar adjectives is malleable and calibrated to the speaker’s pragmatic competence. In a series of eye tracking experiments, we explore the nature of the evidence necessary for the modulation of pragmatic inferences in language comprehension, focusing on the complementary roles of top-down information–knowledge about the particular speaker’s pragmatic competence—and bottom-up cues—distributional information about the use of scalar adjectives in the environment. We find that bottom-up evidence alone (e.g., the speaker says “the big dog” in a context with one dog), in large quantities, can be sufficient to trigger modulation of the listener’s contrastive inferences, with or without top-down cues to support this adaptation. Further, these findings suggest that listeners track and flexibly combine multiple sources of information in service of efficient pragmatic communication.

Psychology and Culture: Top Down Versus Bottom Up?

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cole
Keyword(s):  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up

Optimalisasi Ekonomi Syariah Untuk Peningkatan Kesejahteraan Masyarakat Dalam Pengentasan Kemiskinan Mewujudkan Goodgovernance

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Sadari Sadari ◽  
Nurhidayat Nurhidayat ◽  
Rafiqah Rafiqah
Keyword(s):  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up

Humanisme religius telah mengantarkan pada era kesadaran bahwa peradaban manusia harus memiliki dua arus yang saling menunjang. Selama ini arus balik dalam bidang ekonomi hanya menonjolkan arus balik vertikal atas kebawah (model top down) yang didominasi oleh sistem ekonomi kapitalis dan sosialis, sedangkan di sisi lain mengesampingkan arus balik vertikal dari bawah ke atas (model bottom up) yang didominasi oleh sistem ekonomi syariah, sehingga dampaknya adalah adanya kesenjangan ekonomi yang sangat tajam. Paper ini mewujudkan peran penting, yakni menghubungkan dua arus tersebut secara timbal-balik, yakni mempertemukan arus pertama dengan arus balik kedua, sehingga akan menghasilkan dampak yang positif, progresif, kreatif dan produktif, kemudian pada akhirnya akan dapat meng-optomal-kan ekonomi syariah untuk menciptakan goodgovernance, post goodgovernance secara berkelanjutan, tentunya dengan bantuan peran media kontemporer yang kian update. Ekonomi syariah juga merupakan pilar dan nilai dasar, dari sikap keyakinan dan sikap rasionalitas untuk sanggup menciptakan terwujudnya pemberdayaan dan kesejahteraan sekaligus pengentasan kemiskinan dalam masyarakat di Indonesia.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document