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Study on gestures[edit]

Pressing hands together and touching feets of enlighthened or elder person is common gesture in India. In a picture man pressing hands and women touching feets of the statue of Bodhisattva B. R. Ambedkar on Namvistar Din.


Categories of gestures[edit]




Other spontaneous gestures used during speech production known as iconic gestures are more full of content, and may echo, or elaborate, the meaning of the co-occurring speech. They depict aspects of spatial images, actions, people, or objects.[10] For example, a gesture that depicts the act of throwing may be synchronous with the utterance, "He threw the ball right into the window."[9] Such gestures that are used along with speech tend to be universal. For example, one describing that he/she is feeling cold due to a lack of proper clothing and/or a cold weather can accompany his/her verbal description with a visual one. This can be achieved through various gestures such as by demonstrating a shiver and/or by rubbing the hands together. In such cases, the language or verbal description of the person does not necessarily need to be understood as someone could at least take a hint at what's being communicated through the observation and interpretation of body language which serves as a gesture equivalent in meaning to what's being said through communicative speech.

Studies affirm a strong link between gesture typology and language development. Young children under the age of two seem to rely on pointing gestures to refer to objects that they do not know the names of. Once the words are learned, they eschewed those referential (pointing) gestures. One would think that the use of gesture would decrease as the child develops spoken language, but results reveal that gesture frequency increased as speaking frequency increased with age. There is however a change in gesture typology at different ages, suggesting a connection between gestures and language development. Children most often use pointing and adults rely more on iconic and beat gestures. As children begin producing sentence-like utterances, they also begin producing new kinds of gestures that adults use when speaking (iconics and beats). Evidence of this systematic organization of gesture is indicative of its association to language development.[10]


Social significance[edit]


Vitarka mudra, Tarim Basin, 9th century.





Because of this connection of co-speech gestures--a form of manual action--in language in the brain, Roel Willems and Peter Hagoort conclude that both gestures and language contribute to the understanding and decoding of a speaker's encoded message. Willems and Hagoort's research suggest that "processing evoked by gestures is qualitatively similar to that of words at the level of semantic processing." This conclusion is supported through findings from experiments by Skipper where the use of gestures led to "a division of labor between areas related to language or action (Broca's area and premotor/primary motor cortex respectively)." The use of gestures in combination with speech allowed the brain to decrease the need for "semantic control." Because gestures aided in understanding the relayed message, there was not as great a need for semantic selection or control that would otherwise be required of the listener through Broca's area. Gestures are a way to represent the thoughts of an individual, which are prompted in working memory. The results of an experiment revealed that adults have increased accuracy when they used pointing gestures as opposed to simply counting in their heads (without the use of pointing gestures)[17] Furthermore, the results of a study conducted by Marstaller and Burianová suggest that the use of gestures affect working memory. The researchers found that those with low capacity of working memory who were able to use gestures actually recalled more terms than those with low capacity who were not able to use gestures.[18]

Although there is an obvious connection in the aid of gestures in understanding a message, "the understanding of gestures is not the same as understanding spoken language." These two functions work together and gestures help facilitate understanding, but they only "partly drive the neural language system."[19]

Electronic interface[edit]


See also[edit]


  2. ^ a b c Xu J, Gannon PJ, Emmorey K, Smith JF, Braun AR. (2009). Symbolic gestures and spoken language are processed by a common neural system. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 106:20664–20669. doi:10.1073/pnas.0909197106 PMID 19923436
  3. ^ Corballis, Michael (January–February 2010). "The gestural origins of language". WIREs Cognitive Science 1. 
  5. ^ Kendon, A (1982). "The study of gesture: Some observations on its history". Recherches Sémiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry 2 (1): 45–62. 
  6. ^ Bulwer, J (1644). Chirologia: or the Naturall Language of the Hand. London. 
  7. ^ de Jorio, A (1832/2002). Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21506-4. 
  9. ^ a b c McNeill (1992). Hand and Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
  10. ^ a b Mayberry, Rachel I. (December 2000). "Gesture Reflects Language Development: Evidence from Bilingual Children". Current Directions in Psychological Science 9 (6): 192–196. JSTOR 20182668. 
  11. ^ Fernandez, Eva M.; Helen Smith Cairns (2011). Fundamentals of Psycholinguistics. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 77. ISBN 9781405191470. 
  14. ^ Axtell, R. (1993). Worldsmart: Gestures around the world. World Smart Resource Center, Retrieved from
  16. ^ Iverson, Jana M.; Esther Thelen (2005). "Hand, Mouth and Brain". Journal of Consciousness Studies. Retrieved 1 October 2013. 
  18. ^ Marstaller, Lars and Hana Burianová. "Individual differences in the gesture effect on working memory."Psychonomic Society 20 (2013): 496-500. Academic Search Complete. Web.
  19. ^ Willems, Roel M., and Peter Hagoort. "Neural Evidence for the Interplay between Language, Gesture, and Action: A Review." Brain and Language 101.3 (2007): 1,4-6. Print.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]