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PubMed1993

Preschool children's symbolic representation of objects through gestures.

To investigate the symbolic quality of preschoolers' gestural representations in the absence of real objects, 48 children (16 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) performed 2 tasks. In the first task, they were asked to pretend to use 8 common objects (e.g., "pretend to brush your teeth with a toothbrush"). There was an age-related progression in the symbolic quality of gestural representations. 3- and 4-year-olds used mostly body part gestures (e.g., using an extended finger as the toothbrush), whereas 5-year-olds used imaginary object gestures (e.g., pretending to hold an imaginary toothbrush). To determine if children's symbolic skill is sufficiently flexible to allow them to use gestures other than those spontaneously produced in the first task, in the second task children were asked to imitate, for each object, a gesture modeled by an experimenter. The modeled gesture was different from the one the child performed on the first task (e.g., if the child used a body part gesture to represent a particular object, the experimenter modeled an imaginary object gesture for that object). Ability to imitate modeled gestures was positively related to age but was also influenced by the symbolic mode of gesture. 3-year-olds could not imitate imaginary object gestures as well as body part gestures, suggesting that young preschoolers have difficulty performing symbolic acts that exceed their symbolic level even when the acts are modeled. Results from both tasks provide strong evidence for a developmental progression from concrete body part to more abstract imaginary object gestural representations during the preschool years.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2002

An experimental investigation of some properties of individual iconic gestures that mediate their communicative power.

It has been hypothesized that the iconic hand gestures that accompany talk communicate important semantic information. This research tests whether some gestures, in the absence of speech, are more communicative than others and considers what properties of gestures might affect their communicative power. Our research found that the communicative power of gestures does vary greatly, and that this is significantly affected by the viewpoint from which a gesture is generated, with character viewpoint gestures being more communicative than observer viewpoint gestures. It has also been suggested that gesture viewpoint is connected with the transitivity of the clause that it accompanies, and it was found in our study that respondents appeared to obtain syntactic information about the associated clause from the gesture. This conclusion was based on the observation that when respondents attempted to report what information was contained in gestures, viewed in the absence of speech, there was a significantly higher proportion of transitive structures in their answers after they had watched character viewpoint gestures compared with observer viewpoint gestures. Communication about the syntax of the accompanying clause might thus be a critical, but thus far neglected, aspect of the role of gestures in everyday talk.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

The role of gesture in communication and thinking.

People move their hands as they talk - they gesture. Gesturing is a robust phenomenon, found across cultures, ages, and tasks. Gesture is even found in individuals blind from birth. But what purpose, if any, does gesture serve? In this review, I begin by examining gesture when it stands on its own, substituting for speech and clearly serving a communicative function. When called upon to carry the full burden of communication, gesture assumes a language-like form, with structure at word and sentence levels. However, when produced along with speech, gesture assumes a different form - it becomes imagistic and analog. Despite its form, the gesture that accompanies speech also communicates. Trained coders can glean substantive information from gesture - information that is not always identical to that gleaned from speech. Gesture can thus serve as a research tool, shedding light on speakers' unspoken thoughts. The controversial question is whether gesture conveys information to listeners not trained to read them. Do spontaneous gestures communicate to ordinary listeners? Or might they be produced only for speakers themselves? I suggest these are not mutually exclusive functions - gesture serves as both a tool for communication for listeners, and a tool for thinking for speakers.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1995

The resilience of combinatorial structure at the word level: morphology in self-styled gesture systems.

Combinatorial structure at both word and sentence levels is widely recognized as an important feature of language--one that sets it apart from other forms of communication. The purpose of these studies is to determine whether deaf children who were not exposed to an accessible model of a conventional language would nevertheless incorporate word-level combinatorial structure into their self styled communication systems. In previous work, we demonstrated that, despite their lack of conventional linguistic input, deaf children in these circumstances developed spontaneous gesture systems that were structured at the level of the sentence, with regularities identifiable across gestures in a sentence, akin to syntactic structure. The present study was undertaken to determine whether these gesture systems were structured at a second level, the level of the word or gesture--that is, were there regularities within a gesture, akin to morphological structure? Further, if intra-gesture regularities were found, how wide was the range of variability in their expression? Finally, from where did these intra-gesture regularities come? Specifically, were they derived from the gestures the hearing mothers produced in their attempt to interact with their deaf children? We found that all of the deaf children produced gestures that could be characterized by paradigms of handshape and motion combinations that formed a comprehensive matrix for virtually all of the spontaneous gestures for each child. Moreover, the morphological systems that the children developed, although similar in many respects, were sufficiently different to suggest that the children had introduced relatively arbitrary distinctions into their systems. These differences could not be traced to the spontaneous gestures their hearing mothers produced, but seemed to be shaped by the early gestures that the children themselves created. These findings suggest that combinatorial structure at more than one level is so fundamental to human language that it can be reinvented by children who do not have access to a culturally shared linguistic system. Apparently, combinatorial structure of this sort is not maintained as a universal property of language solely by historical tradition, but also by its centrality to the structure and function of language.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1986

Communicative gestures in aphasia.

Gestural communications of 10 mild and moderate aphasics and five controls were examined in two conditions: Face-to-face informal dyadic conversation and restricted visual access between speaker and listener. Gestural production was significantly reduced with restriction of visual access, supporting the posited communicative function of the hand and arm gestures investigated in this study. No differences were found between aphasic and control subjects in the rate of gestural communication in the natural condition of face-to-face interaction. Moderate aphasics, however, were found to produce proportionally fewer of the complex semantic modifying and relational communicative gestures and more nonspecific, nonconsensually shared, unclear gestures. Gestural complexity was significantly negatively correlated with measures of linguistic impairment for the aphasics. The relationship between the frequency and complexity of communicative gestures and concurrent verbalizations was also examined. The findings of this study provide confirmation for the view that there is an identifiable class of gestures utilized by aphasics for communication, aphasics are impaired in their gestural communicative competence in natural conditions of communication, and the quality of aphasics' gestural communications parallels changes in their verbal communication patterns.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Dissociable neural pathways for the perception and recognition of expressive and instrumental gestures.

Previous functional imaging studies have sought to characterize the neural correlates of gesture representation. However, little is yet known about the representation of different categories of gesture. Here we contrasted the perception of hand gestures that express inner feeling states, e.g. I am angry, I do not care, with the perception of instrumental gestures intended to change the behavior of others by communicating commands, e.g. come here, look over there. We hypothesised that recognition of expressive gestures would activate a network of brain regions associated with mentalising ('theory of mind') whereas instrumental gestures would activate different neural pathways. Twelve normal volunteers underwent fMRI while they watched a series of short videos (3 s duration) of actors performing expressive and instrumental gestures. The volunteers had either to recognise the gesture or to monitor the positions of the hands. As predicted, different neural networks were activated by the observation of instrumental or expressive gestures. The perception of expressive gestures elicited activity in the anterior paracingulate cortex, the amygdala and the temporal poles bilaterally and the right superior temporal sulcus. These regions have all previously been activated during the performance of mentalising tasks. In contrast, instrumental gestures elicited activity in a left-lateralised system previously associated with language and motor imitation.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Left inferior parietal dominance in gesture imitation: an fMRI study.

The inability to imitate gestures is an essential feature of apraxia. However, discrepancies exist between clinical studies in apraxic patients and neuroimaging findings on imitation. We therefore aimed to investigate: (1) which areas are recruited during imitation under conditions similar to clinical tests for apraxic deficits; (2) whether there are common lateralized areas subserving imitation irrespective of the acting limb side; and also (3) whether there are differences between hand and finger gestures. We used fMRI in 12 healthy, right handed subjects to investigate the imitation of four types of variable gestures that were presented by video clips (16 different finger and 16 different hand gestures with either the right or the left arm). The respective control conditions consisted of stereotyped gestures (only two gestures presented in pseudorandom order). Subtraction analysis of each type of gesture imitation (variable>stereotyped) revealed a bilateral activation pattern including the inferior parietal cortex Brodmann Area (BA 40), the superior parietal cortex, the inferior frontal cortex (opercular region), the prefrontal motor cortex, the lateral occipito-temporal junction, and the cerebellum. These results were supported by statistical conjunction of all four subtraction analyses and by the common analysis of all four types of gesture imitation. The direct comparison of the right and left hemispheric activation revealed a lateralization to the left only of the inferior parietal cortex. Comparisons between different types of gesture imitation yielded no significant results. In conclusion, gesture imitation recruits bilateral fronto-parietal regions, with significant lateralization of only one area, namely the left inferior parietal cortex. These in vivo data indicate left inferior parietal dominance for gesture imitation in right handers, confirming lesion-based theories of apraxia.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Undifferentiated lingual gestures in children with articulation/phonological disorders.

Previous research using electropalatography (EPG) has shown that a distinctive articulatory characteristic of lingual consonants in the speech of school-age children with articulation/phonological disorders (APD) is a high amount of tongue-palate contact. Consonants produced in this way have been referred to as undifferentiated lingual gestures. This article reviews the EPG literature on undifferentiated gestures with 4 overarching goals: (a) to provide a precise articulatory description of undifferentiated gestures, (b) to estimate the rate of occurrence of undifferentiated gestures in children with APD, (c) to propose an original.interpretation of undifferentiated gestures, and (d) to discuss the significance of the gestures in the light of current theories of APD. Undifferentiated gestures typically occur during productions of lingual consonant targets and are characterized by contact that lacks clear differentiation between the tongue apex, tongue body, and lateral margins of the tongue. The EPG literature reports 17 school-age children with APD, of whom 12 (71%) show evidence of undifferentiated gestures. Standard transcriptions do not reliably detect undifferentiated gestures, which are transcribed as speech errors (e.g., phonological substitutions, phonetic distortions) in some contexts, but are transcribed as correct productions in other contexts. Undifferentiated gestures are interpreted as reflecting a speech motor constraint involving either delayed or deviant control of functionally independent regions of the tongue. The limitations of the current EPG literature are stated, and the need for research into undifferentiated gestures in preschool children is discussed.

Articulation Disorders↗
PubMed2006

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of Broca's area affects verbal responses to gesture observation.

The aim of the present study was to determine whether Broca's area is involved in translating some aspects of arm gesture representations into mouth articulation gestures. In Experiment 1, we applied low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over Broca's area and over the symmetrical loci of the right hemisphere of participants responding verbally to communicative spoken words, to gestures, or to the simultaneous presentation of the two signals. We performed also sham stimulation over the left stimulation loci. In Experiment 2, we performed the same stimulations as in Experiment 1 to participants responding with words congruent and incongruent with gestures. After sham stimulation voicing parameters were enhanced when responding to communicative spoken words or to gestures as compared to a control condition of word reading. This effect increased when participants responded to the simultaneous presentation of both communicative signals. In contrast, voicing was interfered when the verbal responses were incongruent with gestures. The left stimulation neither induced enhancement on voicing parameters of words congruent with gestures nor interference on words incongruent with gestures. We interpreted the enhancement of the verbal response to gesturing in terms of intention to interact directly. Consequently, we proposed that Broca's area is involved in the process of translating into speech aspects concerning the social intention coded by the gesture. Moreover, we discussed the results in terms of evolution to support the theory [Corballis, M. C. (2002). From hand to mouth: The origins of language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press] proposing spoken language as evolved from an ancient communication system using arm gestures.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Hemisphere asymmetries for imitation of novel gestures.

BACKGROUND: Disorders of imitation are traditionally considered as a symptom of apraxia, but defective imitation of gestures can contrast with intact performance of gestures to verbal command and vice versa. It thus seems worthwhile to explore the neural basis of imitation of gestures independently of other manifestations of apraxia. OBJECTIVE: To assess body part specificity of disturbances of imitation for meaningless gestures of fingers, hand, and foot. METHOD: Imitation of meaningless gestures involving fingers (internal hand configuration), hand (external hand position), or foot was examined in 30 patients with left brain damage (LBD), 20 patients with right brain damage (RBD), and 20 normal control subjects. RESULTS: LBD affected imitation of hand and foot gestures more than imitation of finger gestures, whereas RBD had the strongest effect on finger gestures and affected foot gestures more than hand gestures. CONCLUSION: These results can be accounted for by the assumption that body part coding of gestures depends on left hemisphere function and that additional right hemisphere contributions are afforded when demands on perceptual discrimination rise.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

The role of gesture in children's learning to count.

The role of spontaneous gesture was examined in children's counting and in their assessment of counting accuracy. Eighty-five 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds counted 6 sets of 2-, 4-, and 6-object arrays. In addition, children assessed the counting accuracy of a puppet whose gestures varied as he counted (i.e., gesture matched the number words, gesture mismatched the number words, no gesture at all). Results showed that the correspondence of children's speech and gesture varied systematically across the age groups and that children adhered to the one-to-one correspondence principle in gesture prior to speech. Moreover, children's correspondence of speech and gesture, adherence to the one-to-one principle in gesture, and assessment of the puppet's counting accuracy were related to children's counting accuracy. Findings are discussed in terms of the role that gesture may play in children's understanding of counting.

Attention↗
PubMed2004

Gestural imitation and limb apraxia in corticobasal degeneration.

Limb apraxia is a common symptom of corticobasal degeneration (CBD). While previous research has shown that individuals with CBD have difficulty imitating transitive (tool-use actions) and intransitive non-representational gestures (nonsense actions), intransitive representational gestures (actions without a tool) have not been examined. In the current study, eight individuals with CBD and eight age-matched healthy adults performed transitive, intransitive representational and intransitive non-representational gestures to imitation. The results indicated that compared to controls, individuals with CBD were significantly less accurate in the imitation of transitive and intransitive non-representational gestures but showed no deficits for the imitation of intransitive representational gestures. This advantage for intransitive representational gestures was thought to be due to fewer demands being placed on the analysis of visual-gestural information or the translation of this information into movement when imitating these gestures. These findings speak to the importance of context and the representation of gestures in memory in gesture performance.

Aged↗
PubMed2006

Metaphor explanation attenuates the right-hand preference for depictive co-speech gestures that imitate actions.

Differential activation levels of the two hemispheres due to hemispheric specialization for various linguistic processes might determine hand choice for co-speech gestures. To test this hypothesis, we compared hand choices for gesturing in 20 healthy right-handed participants during explanation of metaphorical vs. non-metaphorical meanings, on the assumption that metaphor explanation enhances the right hemisphere contribution to speech production. Hand choices were analyzed separately for: depictive gestures that imitate action ("character viewpoint gestures," [McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind. What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.]), depictive gestures that express motion, relative locations, and shape ("observer viewpoint gestures"), and "abstract deictic gestures." It was found that the right-hand over left-hand preference was significantly weaker in the metaphor condition than in the non-metaphor conditions for depictive gestures that imitated action. Findings suggest that the activation of the right hemisphere in the metaphor condition reduces the likelihood of left hemisphere generation of gestures that imitate action, thus attenuating the right-hand preference.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Speech and gesture share the same communication system.

Humans speak and produce symbolic gestures. Do these two forms of communication interact, and how? First, we tested whether the two communication signals influenced each other when emitted simultaneously. Participants either pronounced words, or executed symbolic gestures, or emitted the two communication signals simultaneously. Relative to the unimodal conditions, multimodal voice spectra were enhanced by gestures, whereas multimodal gesture parameters were reduced by words. In other words, gesture reinforced word, whereas word inhibited gesture. In contrast, aimless arm movements and pseudo-words had no comparable effects. Next, we tested whether observing word pronunciation during gesture execution affected verbal responses in the same way as emitting the two signals. Participants responded verbally to either spoken words, or to gestures, or to the simultaneous presentation of the two signals. We observed the same reinforcement in the voice spectra as during simultaneous emission. These results suggest that spoken word and symbolic gesture are coded as single signal by a unique communication system. This signal represents the intention to engage a closer interaction with a hypothetical interlocutor and it may have a meaning different from when word and gesture are encoded singly.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Coverbal gestures in Alzheimer's type dementia.

Patterns of conversational gestures were analysed in subjects with Alzheimer's type dementia (DAT), fluent aphasics with a primarily lexical-semantic deficit (FA) and normal subjects. The FA subjects produced twice as many gestures as the normal participants with a normal percentage of gestures that showed semantic features of the lexical items in concurrent speech (iconic). A comparable lexical-semantic deficit together with a deficit in conceptual organisation of information corresponded to a normal gesturing rate in the DAT subjects; however, the percentage of iconic gestures was reduced. Gestures were also analysed in four DAT patients whose communicative performance indicated primarily lexical-semantic (2 patients) or conceptual deficit (2 patients). In the two DAT patients with lexical-semantic deficit, the gesture pattern was like that of the FA patients; in the other two, the pattern of the DAT group was observed. These results agree with previous findings that DAT "empty" speech corresponds to reduced production of gestures showing semantic features (Glosser et al., 1998). However, the comparison between DAT with primarily lexical-semantic or conceptual deficits indicates that the nature of the cognitive impairment underlying poor information content and lack of reference in DAT discourse constrains the production of conversational gestures by patients with this disease. These findings are at variance with the hypothesis of parallel dissolution of speech and gestures in language disorders after brain damage (Cicone et al., 1979; McNeill, 1992; Glosser et al., 1998).

Alzheimer Disease↗
PubMed1992

Comprehension and production of gesture in combination with speech in one-word speakers.

This study explores the role that gesture plays in the earliest stages of language learning. We describe how one-word speakers use gesture in combination with speech in their spontaneous communications, and interpret gesture presented in combination with speech in an experimental situation. Forty one-word speakers (ages 1;2.22 to 2;4.6) were videotaped in a free-play session which provided data on the child's spontaneous gesture and speech production. The children were also given a comprehension task in which the presence and absence of gesture were systematically varied in relation to speech. We found that (1) all of the children spontaneously produced gestures in combination with speech, and (2) all of the children were able to understand gesture when it was presented in combination with speech, not only when the gesture was redundant with speech but also when the gesture substituted for speech. These data suggest that, even at this young age, gesture naturally forms an integrated system with speech in both production and comprehension.

Concept Formation↗
PubMed1998

Gestural communication in Alzheimer's disease.

Spontaneous communicative hand-arm gestures were evaluated in elderly patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) and healthy controls (NC). Based on the notion that speech and gestures arise from common semantic-conceptual representations, qualitatively similar linguistic and gestural communicative impairments were expected in association with semantic memory impairment in AD. Despite equal quantity and rate of gesturing, AD and NC groups produced qualitatively different types of gestures. Patients with AD produced proportionately more referentially ambiguous gestures, fewer gestures referring to metaphoric as opposed to concrete contents, and fewer conceptually complex bimanual gestures. Impaired gestural clarity correlated with severity of linguistic/conceptual impairments and disturbed production of pantomimic movements on a test of ideomotor limb apraxia. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that a central semantic-conceptual disorder underlies the similar linguistic and gestural communication impairments in AD.

Aged↗
PubMed1999

An experimental investigation of the role of iconic gestures in lexical access using the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state was induced in participants to test Butterworth & Hadar's (1989) theory that iconic gestures have a functional role in lexical access. Participants were given rare word definitions from which they had to retrieve the appropriate lexical item, all of which had been rated high in imageability. Half were free to gesture and the other half were instructed to fold their arms. Butterworth & Hadar's theory (1989) would predict, first, that the TOT state should be associated with iconic gesture and, second, that such gestures should assist in this lexical retrieval function. In other words, those who were free to gesture should have less trouble in accessing the appropriate lexical items. The study found that gestures were associated with lexical search. Furthermore, these gestures were sometimes iconic and sufficiently complex and elaborate that naive judges could discriminate the lexical item the speaker was searching for from a set of five alternatives, at a level far above chance. But often the gestures associated with lexical search were not iconic in nature, and furthermore there was no evidence that the presence of the iconic gesture itself actually helped the speaker find the lexical item they were searching for. This experimental result has important implications for models of linguistic production, which posit an important processing role for iconic gestures in the processes of lexical selection.

Adult↗