A number of theories exist to explain why people gesture when speaking, when they produce gesture, and the origin of their gestures. This dissertation focuses on four individual variables that can influence gesture: (i) familiarity, (ii) imageability, (iii) codability, and (iv) motor experience. Four experiments were designed to determine how each…

While the auditory-only aspects of Mandarin speech are heavily-researched and well-known in the field, this dissertation addresses its lesser-known aspects: The visual and audio-visual perception of Mandarin segmental information and lexical-tone information. Chapter II of this dissertation focuses on the audiovisual perception of Mandarin…

When speaking, how do we convert our thoughts into the sounds that come out of our mouths? Though seemingly effortless, the process of word production is realized by a complex system working over different levels of representation. By focusing on the sublexical factors, this work investigates the representations and dynamics of the word production…