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Why People Gesture When They Speak
When people talk, they gesture. However, individuals who are blind from
birth never actually see speakers moving their hands as they talk and thus
have no model for gesturing. Here we show that congenitally blind speakers
gesture despite their lack of a visual model, even when speaking to a blind
listener. Gesture neither requires a model, nor an observant partner, to
appear in natural conversation.
Gestures are produced by speakers of all cultural and linguistic backgrounds,1,2,3 and emerge in young children even before the development of language.4,5 Moreover, the spontaneous hand movements that co-occur with speech are
not random. Gestures convey information to listeners6 that can complement
or even supplement the information relayed in speech.7,8 While a great deal is known about when and what speakers gesture, little
is known about why they gesture.
[...]
We found that all 12 blind speakers gestured as they spoke, despite
the fact that they had never seen gesture. The blind group gestured at
a rate not reliably different from the sighted group [figure
omitted], and conveyed the same information using the same range
of gesture forms. For example, speakers, both blind and sighted, tilted
a C-shaped hand in the air as though pouring liquid from a glass to indicate
that the liquid had been transferred to a different container. [Note
that this "pouring" gesture appears to describe the gesture which
forms the Hebrew letter "Dalet," which means "to pour,"
or "to pour out." --SNT, Meru] Blind speakers apparently
do not require experience receiving gestures before spontaneously producing
gestures of their own. [...]
[...W]e examined whether speakers
gestured even when talking to a listener known to be blind -- and thus
obviously unable to profit from information conveyed by gesture. We asked
four additional children [...], each
blind from birth, to participate in the same reasoning-task protocol. However,
these subjects were explicitly told that the experimenter herself was blind.
Nevertheless, we found that all of the blind speakers gestured when addressing
the blind experimenter. Moreover, they gestured at a rate not reliably
different from that of sighted-with-sighted or sighted-with-blind dyads [figure omitted]. Blind speakers apparently do not gesture solely to convey information
to the blind listener.
Our findings underscore the robustness of gesture in talk. Gesture depends
on neither a model nor an observer and thus appears integral to the speaking
process itself. These findings leave open the possibility that the gestures
which co-occur with speech may themselves reflect,7 or even facilitate,10 the thinking that
underlies speaking.
Jana M. Iverson
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
jiverson@indiana.edu
Susan Goldin-Meadow
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL 60637
sgsg@ccp.uchicago.edu
1. Wundt, W. Völkerpsychologie:
Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache Mythus und Zitte,Vol.
1, 4th Ed. (Alfred Kröner, Stuttgart, 1921).
2. Mead, G.H. Mind, self, and society from
the standpoint of a social behaviorist (University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1934).
3. Feyereisen, P. & de Lannoy, J.-D.
Gestures and speech: Psychological investigations (Cambridge University
Press, New York, 1991).
4. Acredolo, L.P., & Goodwyn, S.W.
Child Development 59, 450-466 (1988).
5. Bates, E. Language and Context (Academic
Press, New York, 1976).
7. McNeill, D. Hand and mind: What gesture
reveals about thought (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992).
8. Goldin-Meadow, S., Alibali, M..W. &
Church, R.B. Psychological Review 100, 279-297 (1993).
10. Rauscher, F.H., Krauss, R.M. &
Chen, Y. Psychological Science 70, 226-231 (1996). |
