Employment of Gestures in Spontaneous Verbal Discourse by Speakers with Aphasia

摘要

Gesture refers to the arm and hand movements that synchronize with speech McNeill (1992). Konget al. (2012) reported a novel approach to independently analyze gesture forms and functions inspontaneous oral discourse. It was found that about one third of normal speakers did not use anygestures. While content-carrying gestures (e.g., iconic and deictic gestures) mainly functioned to helplisteners decode verbal messages, those that are non-content-carrying (e.g., beats) mainly served toemphasize speech content and to regulate conversational flow. Moreover, speakers’ linguisticproficiency and age also affected the overall employment of gestures.This study systematically investigated how gesture use was different between speakers with andwithout aphasia. Whether gestures differed as a function of aphasia severity, semantic processingimpairment, and hemiplegia were also examined.