Hans Rutger Bosker is one of the six researchers of Radboud University and the Radboudumc who will receive a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC Starting Grants help young researchers set up their own research group. Each grant is worth up to 1.5 million euros.
Hans Rutger Bosker
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Bosker investigates human speech production and perception. ‘HearingHands’, his ERC project, focuses on audiovisual communication. In face-to-face conversation, we don’t only produce sound. We also produce all sorts of visual communicative cues, including hand gestures. These hand gestures are carefully timed in close synchrony with the speech. However, it remains unclear what this precise timing contributes to perception.
HearingHands will record gesture-speech synchrony in a range of different languages. It will determine how the human brain integrates visual (gestures) and auditory (speech) input, and will test the usefulness of enriching virtual avatars with carefully timed gestures to enhance speech intelligibility.