Gestures play a crucial role in communication, serving as movements that complement speech both temporally and semantically. Through their unique forms of movement, gestures not only represent speech but also contribute to the understanding of both the speaker and the audience, influencing memory capabilities. The effectiveness of gestures hinges on the audience and speakers' reliance on their clarifying and memory-enhancing capabilities. In today's diverse society, where a standard language is absent even among a singular species, gestures become paramount in providing communication cues globally.
In a world where there is no standard language among a species, gesture is paramount to giving people communication cues worldwide. As there is no common language between a singular species, it is no wonder that there is no common language that exists in an interspecies manner. The study of gestures becomes immensely powerful in such scenarios. In the science journal "Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Narrative Understanding Through a Visual Attention Mechanism," Dr. Wakefield et al. explore the significance of gesture and language in terms of bettering the understanding of individuals between two language barriers. They study the modulating effects of language proficiency on the utility of communicative gestures. To accomplish this task they directed 17 Polish-English children (ages 6-8) to watch videos with scripted gestures, while their eye movements were tracked. They were then asked to recall the premise of the videos in great detail while their gestures were later tracked and coded. They determined that matching gestures were significant in assisting with specific recall. They also determined that visual attention also played a crucial role in the children's ability to recall.
The importance of gestures extends beyond human communication to interspecies interactions. Within the article “Humans Can Recognize and understand chimpanzee and bonobo gestures,” data reveals that intentional gesture communication outside of the human language exists. Many of these gestures are expressed by non-human apes, including distantly related apes such as chimpanzees and orangutans. The article speaks of a study that found that humans who visually fixate on the animal's gestures are able to understand the gestures with an over 50% accuracy rate. Providing the participants with additional information as to what the ape was doing, something that would often be divulged in language, made the number of correct gestures interpreted exponentially greater.
In conclusion, the study's results highlight the vital role of gestures in both interhuman and interspecies communication. Just as gestures enhance speech across different human languages, they prove indispensable in bridging communication gaps between species.
References:
Science X. (2023, January 24). Humans can recognize and understand chimpanzee and bonobo gestures. Phys.org; Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-humans-chimpanzee-bonobo-gestures.html
Towards a great ape dictionary: Inexperienced humans understand common nonhuman ape gestures, PLoS
Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001939
Zielinski, N., & Wakefield, E. M. (2021). Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Narrative Understanding Through a Visual Attention Mechanism. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 43(43). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63r5d3qq
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