How common ground affects the use of gesture space

Previous work has demonstrated that gesture production is affected by common ground (shared background knowledge). For example, studies have demonstrated that new information gets larger, clearer gestures while old/shared information gets smaller, less precise gestures (Gerwing & Bavelas, 2004); new information is likely to be expressed in gesture (with or without speech) while shared information is more likely to be expressed in speech alone (Holler & Stevens, 2007); and, in narrative contexts, common ground leads to higher rates of iconic and deictic gestures (both of which are more 'informative' gestures) (Holler & Wilkin, 2009).