Tversky: Stripping spontaneous communication down to words alone removes substantial meaning
Barbara Tversky · Barbara Tversky: Action Shapes Thought · Sep 6, 2022 · at 37:22
Cognitive psychologist Barbara Tversky explains why multimodal communication such as graphic literature, gestures, and tone conveys information more effectively than plain text.
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“So what graphic books do is what ordinary conversation has. And that ordinary conversation is multimodal. We are using words, we're using gestures, we're using intonation, pauses, all, many, many devices beyond words in a row to convey meaning. We interrupt ourselves, we interrupt each other and all of that multimodal conveys a message, and if you look at people's spontaneous explanations, In conversation, and take out the visuals, so you're taking out the gestures, a lot of the meaning goes. If you take out the intonation, a lot of the meaning goes. If you turn it just into words, a lot of the meaning goes.”
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