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Spencer Kelly

Spencer Kelly

Associate Professor of Psychology
Psychology , 105D Olin Hall
p 315 2287350
What role does the body play with language? My research investigates this question from different perspectives using different methods, but it is built on a single theoretical framework. Working from the position that language is an embodied ability that evolved from bodily communication systems (gestures, facial expressions, eye gaze, etc.) in our evolutionary past, my work investigates how language interacts with the body in present-day communication.

I focus primarily on hand gestures that spontaneously accompany speech. These gestures are interesting because they occur simultaneously with speech but reflect meaning in a distinct way from words.

For example, the form and movement of different drinking gestures—a gentle movement with a small precision grasp depicts sipping from a sake cup whereas a more abrupt movement with a closed fist depicts drinking from a large beer mug—capture the meaning of these two actions in a direct and non-arbitrary way. In contrast, spoken words reflect meaning only indirectly and arbitrarily through the particular conventions of a language. For example, the words, “nomu” in Japanese, and, “drink” in English, are utterly unrelated to the actual act of imbibing. This difference is exactly why co-speech gesture is so interesting—it offers a direct visual complement to the conventional symbols of a language, and when combined with those symbols, provides a more complete “picture” of what a speaker means.

My research on the relationship between speech and gesture spans social, psychological and neural levels. On the social and psychological levels, I use behavioral methods to demonstrate that gestures influence how children and adults comprehend language in different social contexts, and how they think during the explanation of difficult concepts. On the neural level, I use event-related potentials (ERPs) to show that gestures influence speech at multiple stages of language comprehension. See below for PDFs on these different topics.

Here is a video of my research on ScienCentral News and the original story that first appeared in Scientific American Mind. And here is a recent Seattle television story on the role that had gestures play in second language learning. For more on second language learning and instruction, visit Colgate's Center for Language and Brain.

If you are interested in more research on gesture, brain and language, click here for a link to a special issue (June, 2007) on the topic in the journal, Brain and Language. Or visit the webpage for the International Society for Gesture Studies (ISGS) to learn more about the field of gesture research more broadly.

Degree

 BA Washington University, St. Louis 1991; MA, PhD University of Chicago 1997, 1999 (Complete curriculum vitae [PDF])

Specialities

 Cognitive neuroscience, verbal and nonverbal communication, psycholinguistics, developmental psychology, research methods

Publications

 (Hyperlinks lead to PDF files or free download sites)
* denotes Colgate undergraduate

Professional Experience

 Visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands (spring 2005, 2009); Allen Edwards Lecturer at the University of Washington in Seattle (fall 2008)

Distinctions

 - Picker Research Fellowship, Colgate University (2005-2006, 2009)
- Picker Interdisciplinary Research Grant, Colgate University (2007-2009)
- Gastwissenschaftler (Visiting Scientist) at the MPI CBS, Leipzig, Germany (Summer, 2007)
- Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, University of Louisville (1999-2000)
- Pre-Doctoral National Research Service Award, University of Chicago, declined (1999)
- William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship, University of Chicago (1998-1999)
- John Dewey Lectureship Prize, University of Chicago (1998)
- Division of Social Sciences Scholarship, University of Chicago (1994-1998)