Major
Neuroscience
Anticipated Graduation Year
2026
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Gestures are hand movements that provide information and can clarify ambiguous speech. For example, in the sentence “Sparky is a pet”, the type of pet is unclear; however, if the speaker produces a flapping arm gesture, listeners could infer that Sparky is a bird.
Despite gestures sometimes providing the only information needed to resolve ambiguity in a spoken message, not all individuals integrate gesture into their understanding of speech (e.g., Winter & Duffy, 2020; Demir-Lira et al., 2018). The mechanisms underlying this variability remain unclear.
Here, we investigate one potential mechanism supporting integration: visual attention to gesture. We ask: 1) Does gesture enhance comprehension of ambiguous speech? 2) Does visual attention to gesture (and gesture-related space) predict comprehension accuracy, and does this depend on gesture size?
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield, Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Exploring Attentional Mechanisms of Speech-Gesture Integration
Gestures are hand movements that provide information and can clarify ambiguous speech. For example, in the sentence “Sparky is a pet”, the type of pet is unclear; however, if the speaker produces a flapping arm gesture, listeners could infer that Sparky is a bird.
Despite gestures sometimes providing the only information needed to resolve ambiguity in a spoken message, not all individuals integrate gesture into their understanding of speech (e.g., Winter & Duffy, 2020; Demir-Lira et al., 2018). The mechanisms underlying this variability remain unclear.
Here, we investigate one potential mechanism supporting integration: visual attention to gesture. We ask: 1) Does gesture enhance comprehension of ambiguous speech? 2) Does visual attention to gesture (and gesture-related space) predict comprehension accuracy, and does this depend on gesture size?