The Effect of visibility gesture production and their relation with accuracy : listening to our hands

Abstract

Do we only gesture for our listeners? This study examined the relation between gestures and visibility, looking at how gesture production is affected in visibility and nonvisible conditions. Participants were paired and they had to give directions to their partners both by telephone and face-toface. They transmitted a previously given route while they were video recorded with a visible camera for later observation. McNeill (1992), categorised gestures in iconic, metaphoric, beats, and abstract deictics, this taxonomy was adopted in this experiment to classify participants' gestures. Moreover, the internalisation of the route process was also video recorded to observe if they produced any gesture outside the communicative situation, and a succeeding individual interview was realised to each participant to obtain more information for better understanding of the results. Accuracy was also observed to look at the connection between gesture production and the success in communication. Participants showed a higher amount of gestures in visibility conditions, and the effect of this variable was especially present in abstract deictics, but in most of the cases, these gestures also performed a beat function. In terms of accuracy, the ones who produced more gestures achieved greater accuracy than those pairs who displayed less gestures. The examination of the internalisation of the route showed one pair gesturing in a non communicative situation, thus not gesturing for any listener. These findings suggest that visibility has a huge effect in gesture production. In the same way, gesture production seems to increase the possibilities of success in communication. Finally, the examination of gestures in a non communicative situation suggests that they do not only serve for communicative purposes but for speaker-internal processes such as creating a cognitive map of the ideas of their later speech.