What ’ s in a gesture On verbs , nouns , actions and objects as reflected in gestures of persons with and without aphasia

This study treats the semantic interpretation of co-speech gestures produced with nouns and verbs. One set of 30 gestures was originally produced in conversation by speakers with aphasia, whereas another set of 30 gestures was produced by speakers without aphasia. Each gesture was mimicked by the experiment leader to a panel of judges. The interpreted meaning was written down by the panel of 13 subjects, 7 with the same linguistic and cultural background as the original producers and 6 with other linguistic-cultural backgrounds. The purpose was to study the possible influence on the interpretations of (i) aphasia – no aphasia, in the originally producing group,(ii) cultural background in the panel, (iii) verb vs. noun (or action vs. object orientation) of the originally co-produced word, and (iv) the level of abstraction of a gesture-word-combination. The results showed no influence from aphasia in the producer or cultural background in the interpreting panel. Action gestures tended to be more frequent for both persons with and without aphasia than object gestures and were used also with some nouns. The level of abstractness was captured in the interpretation of about 75% of the items and in the remaining 25%, the interpretations tended to be more abstract than the originally co-produced word.