Anne WiltshireAt the international gesture Conference this summer, ORAGE 2001, I met Anne Wiltshire who spoke of her recent work with Condon upon synchrony. Condon is an important pioneer in gesture research since the 1970's, and his work on synchrony was fundamental. At the conference, Anne showed us a short piece of video footage of Condon's work with the Autistic, and spoke with much passion and brilliance about the importance of his method. Anne did her PhD at the University of New Mexico (1999) on the topic of synchrony, for which Condon was an external committee member. We welcome her to speak with us on her work.
Abstract
While attending a graduate seminar (in Linguistics) that encouraged
interdisciplinary reading, I came upon the work of the W.S. Condon
whose microanalysis of sound film had revealed the intriguing
phenomenon of synchrony. This was the term Condon applied to the
rhythmic correlation between speech and body movement, within and
across speakers. Fascinated by synchrony and the potential it offered
to further understanding the nature of language, communication and
human behavior in general, I read more of Condon's publications and
ultimately contacted him in retirement in the Boston area. Since 1996
it has been my privilege to enjoy a working relationship with
Dr.Condon. During this period of time, I have learned not only of the
passion Condon maintains for the phenomena he observed over many years
and literally thousands of feet of film, but the required
transformation its discovery imposed on him as a researcher. Condon
found that the initial stages of observation using the 'natural
history approach' to research (as opposed to the more familiar model
of posing the hypothetical question), was agonizingly slow and
apparently resistant to analysis. He attributes this reluctant
unfolding of data in retrospect to his own internalized preconceptions
on the nature of communication and how it occurs in interaction.
Despite general resistance to acceptance of synchrony in academic circles (at least in this country), it became the topic of my doctoral dissertation at the University of New Mexico (1999). I shall discuss Condon's work in more detail and also explain the experiment documented in the dissertation that was designed to partially replicate and validate the phenomenon.