Gestures are a key factor in communication when it comes to talking face to face. While some may be meaningless and are more things for our body to do while we try to think of something, others carry valuable information that can help further explain what you are trying to say. Gestures like these are typically understood by all, and when incorrect words are used, can help clarify a situation. Most times we gesture so that the audience has a better understanding of what we are attempting to say. We also gesture in order to further emphasize key points of interest in our conversations. For example, I could say I am mad, and you may take that at face value; however, if I say I'm mad and cross my arms and look angrily at you, you may be able to grasp the extent at which I am mad, or maybe the level of mad that I am. While most people already had some familiarity with the fact that gestures are important because we use them all the time, many people don't actually understand how much gestures have importance in our life. Recent studies shows us how crucial they are to communication.
A few years ago, a development was made in how gestures help improve language comprehension across multiple languages. Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield and researcher Natalia Zielinski analyzed how gestures helped assist understanding in students attending Saturday Polish School and wrote about it in the article, "Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Narrative Understanding Through a Visual Attention Mechanism." Through this research they were able to generate a theory that gestures assist in any language when it comes to understanding. Furthermore they were able to see that in the child's weaker language, that being polish for all the children, the gestures helped the understanding more than it did with English. Continued research demonstrated with eye tracking showed that most kids when in the learning stage when paying attention would look at gestures more than anything else. This research helps show that especially in the younger population, gesturing is a key aspect to have in conversation, as it helps stimulate learning.
There is further research in relation to gestures from the article, "The Role of Gestures in Communication and Cognition: Implications for Understanding and Treating Neurogenic Communication Disorder" written by Sharice Clough and Melissa Duff. Their research is on a vast variety of different researches and compiles a large chunk of past information and understanding all in one article. They discuss numerous experiments relating to how gestures improve interpretation. Many of these sections include things such as how gestures reduce the load on the mind, or how gestures reinforce and stimulate memory. There is also a section on how gestures affect certain neurogenic disorders such as Aphasia. Finally there is a section on children and gesturing, which is a similar research to what Dr Wakefield produced back in 2021. Their conclusions generated how gesturing was a key factor in the learning of children and ultimately improved how they understood different things.
The research of both Dr Wakefield and Zielinski and all of the research done in the article by Clough and Duff further demonstrates the importance of gesturing in conversations. While gesturing does not solve all understanding problems, it does assist a great deal in our communication. It also is a very important aspect for our youth, as it is another point of interest for them to focus on and learn. Overall gesturing has beneficial results when using them int he right way. Furthermore it is important that when speaking and gesturing, we use the right gestures in order to present our thoughts and ideas correctly in order to not generate confusion. Further research will hopefully be done in the future to further analyze how gestures impact learning, and how maybe some gestures will stimulate learning better than others.
References
Clough, Sharice, and Melissa C. Duff. “The Role of Gesture in Communication and Cognition: Implications for Understanding and Treating Neurogenic Communication Disorders.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 14, no. 323, 11 Aug. 2020, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00323/full
Zielinski, Natalia, and Elizabeth M. Wakefield. “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, vol. 43, no. 43, 2021, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63r5d3qq
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