Handy communication

If someone were to tie your hands behind your back; a) would you enjoy it and b) would you be able to communicate? The second half of that question does not relate to any loss of voice due to being overwhelmed emotion, it refers to the tendency that some people have to gesticulate with their hands when they speak. We all know those people, typically we associate it with volatile Mediterranean types, who gesture broadly as they talk. While some people are noted for it, a new study supports the notion that in fact we all use our hands to communicate.

The new study looked at the role of gestures in speech “prosody”, which is the intonation and rhythm of spoken language. It is prosody that allows us to tell the difference between the statement, “This is dinner” and the surprised question “This is dinner?”. The researchers theorised that prosody also includes gestures and they wanted to see if this is true.

In the study subjects were asked to listen to a series of “ambiguous” phrases. Sometimes the phrases were only heard while on other occasions they were heard and watched being spoken on a video. On some occasions the gestures of the speaker matched what was being said while on others there was a disparity between the gestures and what was being said.

The results showed that when the gestures matched the words there was no improvement in understanding compared to the audio only situation. However, when the gestures did not match what was being said people made from frequent mistakes in understanding being more likely to go with the meaning of the gesture than the words.

That goes to show that communication is a multifactorial event and gestures are very much a part of it, at least as much as the linguistic component. It seems that the success of your communication really is in your hands.