Iconic gestures prime words: comparison of priming effects when gestures are presented alone and when they are accompanying speech.

Wing-Chee So,Ju-Min Melvin Yap,De-Fu Yap,Eugene Kheng,Alvan Low Yi-Feng

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00779

Wing-Chee So, Ju-Min Melvin Yap + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00779

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Abstract

Previous studies have shown that iconic gestures presented in an isolated manner prime visually presented semantically related words. Since gestures and speech are almost always produced together, this study examined whether iconic gestures accompanying speech would prime words and compared the priming effect of iconic gestures with speech to that of iconic gestures presented alone. Adult participants (N = 180) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions in a lexical decision task: Gestures-Only (the primes were iconic gestures presented alone); Speech-Only (the primes were auditory tokens conveying the same meaning as the iconic gestures); Gestures-Accompanying-Speech (the primes were the simultaneous coupling of iconic gestures and their corresponding auditory tokens). Our findings revealed significant priming effects in all three conditions. However, the priming effect in the Gestures-Accompanying-Speech condition was comparable to that in the Speech-Only condition and was significantly weaker than that in the Gestures-Only condition, suggesting that the facilitatory effect of iconic gestures accompanying speech may be constrained by the level of language processing required in the lexical decision task where linguistic processing of words forms is more dominant than semantic processing. Hence, the priming effect afforded by the co-speech iconic gestures was weakened.

Highlights

We examined whether iconic gestures accompanying speech would prime semantically related words and whether such priming was comparable in size to that produced by iconic gestures presented alone in a lexical decision task (Yap et al, 2011)
Our study set out to examine whether iconic gestures accompanying speech prime semantically-related words and to compare priming in this condition to when gestures or speech are presented alone
The findings revealed that the priming effect in the Gestures-Accompanying-Speech condition was significant but it was weaker than that in the Gestures-Only condition and comparable to that in the Speech-Only condition

Summary

Introduction

155), iconic gestures represent thought or are so-called “material carriers of thinking.”. Previous research has shown that iconic gestures often convey semantic information relevant to that in speech (e.g., McNeill, 1992; Kita and Özyürek, 2003; Özyürek et al, 2005). A speaker extends his little finger and thumb (with thumb pointing up and little finger pointing down) and puts his hand next to his ear while saying, “I’ll call you tonight.”. This iconic gesture resembles the action of talking on a phone and reinforces the semantic content expressed in speech A speaker extends his little finger and thumb (with thumb pointing up and little finger pointing down) and puts his hand next to his ear while saying, “I’ll call you tonight.” This iconic gesture resembles the action of talking on a phone and reinforces the semantic content expressed in speech

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