Why people gesture when they speak (original) (raw)

Nature volume 396, page 228 (1998) Cite this article

Abstract

People use gestures when they talk, but is this behaviour learned from watching others move their hands when talking? Individuals who are blind from birth never see such gestures and so have no model for gesturing. But here we show that congenitally blind speakers gesture despite their lack of a visual model, even when they speak to a blind listener. Gestures therefore require neither a model nor an observant partner.

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Figure 1: Mean number of gestures and words produced per task by 12 sighted and 12 congenitally blind speakers interacting with a sighted experimenter, and 4 congenitally blind speakers interacting with a blind experimenter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington, 47405, Indiana, USA
    Jana M. Iverson
  2. Departments of Psychology and Education, University of Chicago, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA
    Susan Goldin-Meadow

Authors

  1. Jana M. Iverson
  2. Susan Goldin-Meadow

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Iverson, J., Goldin-Meadow, S. Why people gesture when they speak.Nature 396, 228 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/24300

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