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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 24, 2025

Author Spotlight: Deciphering the Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Gesture in Communication

Author Spotlight: Deciphering the Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Gesture in Communication

Published on: January 26, 2024

Gesturing during disfluent speech: A pragmatic account.

Yağmur Deniz Kısa¹, Susan Goldin-Meadow², Daniel Casasanto³

¹Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

|June 12, 2024

Summary

People gesture more during speech disfluencies when listeners can see them. Gestures signal speaking difficulties, rather than aiding speech production, supporting a pragmatic communication role.

Keywords:

Gesture Lexical retrieval hypothesis Pragmatic signaling hypothesis Pragmatics Speech disfluency

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Linguistics
Communication Studies

Background:

Speakers often gesture during speech disfluencies.
A prevailing theory suggests gestures aid speech production.
An alternative view proposes gestures pragmatically signal speaking difficulty.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the communicative function of gestures during speech disfluencies.
To differentiate between the speech facilitation and pragmatic signaling hypotheses.
To determine if gesture-disfluency correlation depends on visual access to gestures.

Main Methods:

Experiment comparing gesture frequency during disfluencies with visible vs. invisible gestures.
Participants produced speech under conditions where their gestures were either observable or hidden from listeners.
Analysis of the relationship between speech disfluency occurrence and gesture production.

Main Results:

Speakers gestured more frequently during disfluent speech when gestures were visible to listeners.
This increased gesturing during disfluency disappeared when gestures were made invisible.
The findings indicate a dependency on listener perception.

Conclusions:

Gestures during disfluent speech are not primarily for speech production facilitation.
Gestures serve as pragmatic signals, informing listeners about the speaker's communicative challenges.
The study supports a communicative, rather than a cognitive, explanation for the gesture-disfluency link.