GesturalOrigins : a bottom-up framework for establishing systematic gesture data across ape species
Abstract
Current methodologies present significant hurdles to understanding patterns in the gestural communication of individuals, populations, and species. To address this issue, we present a bottom-up data collection framework for the study of gesture: GesturalOrigins. By “bottom-up”, we mean that we minimise a priori structural choices, allowing researchers to define larger concepts (such as ‘gesture types’, ‘response latencies’, or ‘gesture sequences’) flexibly once coding is complete. Data can easily be re-organised to provide replication of, and comparison with, a wide range of datasets in published and planned analyses. We present packages, templates, and instructions for the complete data collection and coding process. We illustrate the flexibility that our methodological tool offers with worked examples of (great ape) gestural communication, demonstrating differences in the duration of action phases across distinct gesture action types and showing how species variation in the latency to respond to gestural requests may be revealed or masked by methodological choices. While GesturalOrigins is built from an ape-centred perspective, the basic framework can be adapted across a range of species and potentially to other communication systems. By making our gesture coding methods transparent and open access, we hope to enable a more direct comparison of findings across research groups, improve collaborations, and advance the field to tackle some of the long-standing questions in comparative gesture research.
Citation
Grund , C V C , Badihi , G , Graham , K E , Safryghin , A & Hobaiter , C 2023 , ' GesturalOrigins : a bottom-up framework for establishing systematic gesture data across ape species ' , Behavior Research Methods , vol. 56 , pp. 986–1001 . https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02082-9
Publication
Behavior Research Methods
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1554-351XType
Journal article
Description
Funding: This research received funding from the European Union’s 8th Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, under grant agreement no 802719.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.