Researcher:
Lira, Özlem Ece Demir

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Undergraduate Student

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Özlem Ece Demir

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Lira

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Lira, Özlem Ece Demir

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2020 - 20212

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    Production and comprehension of co-speech gestures in Parkinson's disease
    (2021) N/A; N/A; N/A; N/A; N/A; Department of Psychology; Department of Psychology; Yurtsever, Zeynep; Çakmak, Özgür Öztop; Eser, Hale Yapıcı; Ertan, Fatoş Sibel; Lira, Özlem Ece Demir; Göksun, Tilbe; N/A; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; N/A; Faculty Member; N/A; School of Medicine; School of Medicine; School of Medicine; N/A; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/A; 299358; 134359; 112829; N/A; 47278
    This study examined how impairments in sensorimotor abilities of individuals with Parkinson's Disease (PD) can be related to the use and understanding of co-speech hand gestures involving literal and figurative actions. We tested individuals with PD (n = 18, 12 males, Mage = 56.5, SDage = 8.16, PD duration since onset: M = 5.36 years, SD = 3.51, Hoehn and Yahr Scale:MH&Y = 2.09, SDH&Y = 0.50) and age- and education-matched neurotypical controls (n = 18, 14 males, Mage = 56.61, SDage = 8.88) with two experimental tasks. In the gesture production task, participants retold the narratives presented to them in a written format. In the gesture comprehension task, participants were asked to match a gesture with a novel verb in literal and figurative sentence contexts. Results showed that patients with PD gestured significantly less than the neurotypical controls. No group differences were found for the type of gesture use. Individuals with PD performed worse than controls on matching gestures with novel verbs, particularly for figurative meanings. Individuals' severity in the disease negatively correlated with their performance for these figurative novel verb-gesture matches. The performances in the two tasks did not correlate. These findings suggest that problems in sensorimotor abilities resulting from PD can influence overall gesture production and gesture comprehension, providing further evidence on the relations between PD and the impaired use of multimodal language. 
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    PublicationOpen Access
    L2 vocabulary teaching by social robots: the role of gestures and on-screen cues as scaffolds
    (Frontiers, 2020) Department of Psychology; Department of Psychology; Lira, Özlem Ece Demir; Kanero, Junko; Oranç, Cansu; Koşkulu, Sümeyye; Franko, İdil; Göksun, Tilbe; Küntay, Aylin C.; Faculty Member; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/A; N/A; N/A; N/A; N/A; 47278; 178879
    Social robots are receiving an ever-increasing interest in popular media and scientific literature. Yet, empirical evaluation of the educational use of social robots remains limited. In the current paper, we focus on how different scaffolds (co-speech hand gestures vs. visual cues presented on the screen) influence the effectiveness of a robot second language (L2) tutor. In two studies, Turkish-speaking 5-year-olds (n = 72) learned English measurement terms (e.g., big, wide) either from a robot or a human tutor. We asked whether (1) the robot tutor can be as effective as the human tutor when they follow the same protocol, (2) the scaffolds differ in how they support L2 vocabulary learning, and (3) the types of hand gestures affect the effectiveness of teaching. In all conditions, children learned new L2 words equally successfully from the robot tutor and the human tutor. However, the tutors were more effective when teaching was supported by the on-screen cues that directed children's attention to the referents of target words, compared to when the tutor performed co-speech hand gestures representing the target words (i.e., iconic gestures) or pointing at the referents (i.e., deictic gestures). The types of gestures did not significantly influence learning. These findings support the potential of social robots as a supplementary tool to help young children learn language but suggest that the specifics of implementation need to be carefully considered to maximize learning gains. Broader theoretical and practical issues regarding the use of educational robots are also discussed.