Article published In:
GestureVol. 1:2 (2002) ► pp.129–149
An experimental investigation of the role of different types of iconic gesture in communication
A semantic feature approach
Respondents, who had either seen or not seen a sample of the iconic gestures that encoders produce when narrating a story, answered questions about the original story and it was found that the overall accuracy score for respondents who saw the iconic gestures in addition to hearing the speech was 56.8% compared to 48.6% for speech only. This was a highly reliable effect and suggests that iconic gestures are indeed communicative. Character viewpoint gestures were also significantly more communicative than observer viewpoint gestures particularly about the semantic feature relative position, but the observer viewpoint gestures were effective at communicating information, particularly about the semantic features speed and shape. There were no significant correlations between the amount of information that gestures added to speech and the amount they conveyed in its absence, which suggests that the relationship between speech and gesture is not fixed but variable. The implications of this research for our fundamental conception of iconic gestures are considered.
Cited by (43)
Cited by 43 other publications
Shi, Dan
2024. First-order sense-making in L2 academic discussions: A distributed view of teacher languaging dynamics in embodied and situated learning context. System 123 ► pp. 103333 ff. 
Cairney, Brianna E., Stanley H. West, Eileen Haebig, Christopher R. Cox & Heather D. Lucas
2023. Interpretations of meaningful and ambiguous hand gestures in autistic and non-autistic adults: A norming study. Behavior Research Methods
Alcaraz Carrión, Daniel
2022. Chapter 9. Physical and imaginary landmarks in English time gestures. In Time Representations in the Perspective of Human Creativity [Human Cognitive Processing, 75], ► pp. 187 ff.
Völsch, Juliane, Isabell Wartenburger & Nicole Stadie
2022. Do gestures have a hand in verb retrieval? Investigation of iconic and non-iconic gestures in aphasia. Aphasiology 36:7 ► pp. 781 ff.
Beattie, Geoffrey & Laura McGuire
2021. Personality and climate change mitigation: a psychological and semiotic exploration of the sustainable choices of optimists. Semiotica 2021:241 ► pp. 237 ff.
Kandana Arachchige, Kendra G., Isabelle Simoes Loureiro, Wivine Blekic, Mandy Rossignol & Laurent Lefebvre
2021. The Role of Iconic Gestures in Speech Comprehension: An Overview of Various Methodologies. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Kandana Arachchige, Kendra Gimhani, Wivine Blekic, Isabelle Simoes Loureiro & Laurent Lefebvre
2021. Covert Attention to Gestures Is Sufficient for Information Uptake. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Alcaraz Carrión, Daniel, Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas & Javier Valenzuela
2020. Enaction Through Co-speech Gesture: The Rhetorical Handing of the Mental Timeline. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 68:4 ► pp. 411 ff.
Iwasaki, Noriko & Keiko Yoshioka
2019. Chapter 11. Iconicity in L2 Japanese speakers’ multi-modal language use. In Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives [Iconicity in Language and Literature, 16], ► pp. 265 ff.
Yang, Ping
2018. Developing TESOL teacher intercultural identity: An intercultural communication competence approach. TESOL Journal 9:3 ► pp. 525 ff.
FREDERIKSEN, ANNE THERESE
2017. Separating viewpoint from mode of representation in iconic co-speech gestures: insights from Danish narratives. Language and Cognition 9:4 ► pp. 677 ff.
Masson-Carro, Ingrid, Martijn Goudbeek & Emiel Krahmer
2017. How What We See and What We Know Influence Iconic Gesture Production. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 41:4 ► pp. 367 ff.
Masson‐Carro, Ingrid, Martijn Goudbeek & Emiel Krahmer
2016. Imposing Cognitive Constraints on Reference Production: The Interplay Between Speech and Gesture During Grounding. Topics in Cognitive Science 8:4 ► pp. 819 ff.
Gurney, Daniel J., Louise R. Ellis & Emily Vardon-Hynard
2016. The saliency of gestural misinformation in the perception of a violent crime. Psychology, Crime & Law 22:7 ► pp. 651 ff.
Kok, Kasper, Kirsten Bergmann, Alan Cienki & Stefan Kopp
Chue, Shien, Yew-Jin Lee, Kim Chwee Daniel Tan & Mark Boylan
2015. Iconic gestures as undervalued representations during science teaching. Cogent Education 2:1 ► pp. 1021554 ff.
Stec, Kashmiri
Wu, Ying Choon & Seana Coulson
2014. Co-speech iconic gestures and visuo-spatial working memory. Acta Psychologica 153 ► pp. 39 ff.
Cornelissen, Joep P., Jean S. Clarke & Alan Cienki
2012. Sensegiving in entrepreneurial contexts: The use of metaphors in speech and gesture to gain and sustain support for novel business ventures. International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship 30:3 ► pp. 213 ff.
Koutsombogera, Maria & Harris Papageorgiou
2012. Iconic Gestures in Face-to-Face TV Interviews. In Gesture and Sign Language in Human-Computer Interaction and Embodied Communication [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7206], ► pp. 262 ff.
Obermeier, Christian, Thomas Dolk & Thomas C. Gunter
2012. The benefit of gestures during communication: Evidence from hearing and hearing-impaired individuals. Cortex 48:7 ► pp. 857 ff.
Rieser, Hannes, Kirsten Bergmann & Stefan Kopp
2012. How Do Iconic Gestures Convey Visuo-Spatial Information? Bringing Together Empirical, Theoretical, and Simulation Studies. In Gesture and Sign Language in Human-Computer Interaction and Embodied Communication [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7206], ► pp. 139 ff.
Rowbotham, Samantha, Judith Holler, Donna Lloyd & Alison Wearden
2012. How Do We Communicate About Pain? A Systematic Analysis of the Semantic Contribution of Co-speech Gestures in Pain-focused Conversations. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 36:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
SO, WING CHEE & JIA YI LIM
2012. Point to a referent, and say, “what is this?” Gesture as a potential cue to identify referents in a discourse. Applied Psycholinguistics 33:2 ► pp. 329 ff.
Galati, Alexia & Arthur G. Samuel
2011. The role of speech-gesture congruency and delay in remembering action events. Language and Cognitive Processes 26:3 ► pp. 406 ff.
Beattie, Geoffrey, Kate Webster & Jamie Ross
2010. The Fixation and Processing of the Iconic Gestures That Accompany Talk. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 29:2 ► pp. 194 ff.
Cohen, Doron, Geoffrey Beattie & Heather Shovelton
2010. Nonverbal indicators of deception: How iconic gestures reveal thoughts that cannot be suppressed. Semiotica 2010:182
Cohen, Doron, Geoffrey Beattie & Heather Shovelton
2011. Tracking the distribution of individual semantic features in gesture across spoken discourse: New perspectives in multi-modal interaction. Semiotica 2011:185
Parrill, Fey, Jennifer Bullen & Huston Hoburg
2010. Effects of input modality on speech–gesture integration. Journal of Pragmatics 42:11 ► pp. 3130 ff.
Holler, Judith, Heather Shovelton & Geoffrey Beattie
2009. Do Iconic Hand Gestures Really Contribute to the Communication of Semantic Information in a Face-to-Face Context?. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 33:2 ► pp. 73 ff.
Holler, Judith & Katie Wilkin
2009. Communicating common ground: How mutually shared knowledge influences speech and gesture in a narrative task. Language and Cognitive Processes 24:2 ► pp. 267 ff.
Merola, Giorgio
2009. The Effects of the Gesture Viewpoint on the Students’ Memory of Words and Stories. In Gesture-Based Human-Computer Interaction and Simulation [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5085], ► pp. 272 ff.
Cienki, Alan & Cornelia Müller
2008. Metaphor, Gesture, and Thought. In The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, ► pp. 483 ff.
Cuadrado, Isabel & Inmaculada Fernández
2008. ¿Cómo intervienen maestros y profesores para favorecer el aprendizaje en Secundaria? Un estudio comparativo desde el análisis del discurso. Infancia y Aprendizaje 31:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Parrill, Fey
2008. Subjects in the hands of speakers: An experimental study of syntactic subject and speech-gesture integration. Cognitive Linguistics 19:2
Holle, Henning & Thomas C. Gunter
2007. The Role of Iconic Gestures in Speech Disambiguation: ERP Evidence. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19:7 ► pp. 1175 ff.
Holler, Judith & Rachel Stevens
2007. The Effect of Common Ground on How Speakers Use Gesture and Speech to Represent Size Information. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 26:1 ► pp. 4 ff.
Duncan, Susan D.
2006. Review of Beattie ((2003)): Visible thought. The new psychology of body language. Gesture 6:1 ► pp. 103 ff.
Beattie, Geoffrey & Heather Shovelton
2005. Why the spontaneous images created by the hands during talk can help make TV advertisements more effective. British Journal of Psychology 96:1 ► pp. 21 ff.
Beattie, Geoffrey & Heather Shovelton
2006. A critical appraisal of the relationship between speech and gesture and its implications for the treatment of aphasia. Advances in Speech Language Pathology 8:2 ► pp. 134 ff.
Beattie, Geoffrey & Heather Shovelton
2011. An exploration of the other side of semantic communication: How the spontaneous movements of the human hand add crucial meaning to narrative. Semiotica 2011:184
Holler, Judith & Geoffrey Beattie
2004. The Interaction of Iconic Gesture and Speech in Talk. In Gesture-Based Communication in Human-Computer Interaction [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2915], ► pp. 63 ff.
Kendon, Adam
2004. Review of Goldin-Meadow ((2003)): Hearing gesture: How our hands help us think. Gesture 4:1 ► pp. 91 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.