The use of gestures to accompany speech comes naturally to many people. Some use gestures instinctually, but others use it to better get a point across. This raises the question of whether gesturing actually does help with understanding. In the research presented in the article, “Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Narrative Understanding Through a Visual Attention Mechanism,” Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield studied how the use of co-speech gestures can help comprehension of bilingual children in their less-proficient language. The sample of participants were young children who spoke both English and Polish while being less proficient in Polish. The children were shown short video clips of an actress describing the plot of an episode of a television show in either English or Polish while using gestures at certain story points. They were then asked to recall the plot of the episode. The results concluded that the use of gestures had more of a positive effect on the Polish episode recollection than the English episode recollection. This study provided useful evidence supporting the idea that gesturing is a valid communication tool that has the potential to improve understanding. Dr. Wakefield’s research also opens up possible avenues for exploring the effects of gestures in more complex types of communication.
For thousands of years, dogs have been domesticated and become companions to many humans. As a species, dogs have proven to be very intelligent. As pets, they’ve even shown signs of understanding some of our language. In the article, “Free-Ranging Dogs Are Capable of Utilizing Complex Human Pointing Cues,” Dr. Anindita Bhadra and other researchers conducted a study using stray dogs in India. They presented the dogs with two covered bowls, one with food and one that only smelled like food. One of the researchers would then point to one of the bowls for varying lengths of time. Some dogs wouldn’t approach the bowls at all, but this was credited to the anxious states of the dogs. Of the dogs that did approach, 80% approached the bowl the researcher pointed to. This suggests that these dogs understood the meaning of the researcher’s gesture. As further evidence of this, if the bowl the researcher pointed to ended up being empty, the dogs were then less likely to trust the researcher’s pointing. This study provides fascinating evidence of how gestures transcend species. Dogs who were not accustomed to living peacefully in the home of a human and who, in many cases, had negative experiences living as strays, were able to process and follow along with simple gestures. This can be the basis for further research exploring the extent to which dogs and other animals can understand human gestures. These findings, along with Dr. Wakefield’s, provide an interesting look at the function of gestures. Not only can they help with processing language, but they also open the door to interspecies communication. As shown by both studies, while gesturing comes naturally to humans, there is also evidence that it can be used strategically to advance communication from person to person, as well as person to animal.
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