Raise your hand if you’re spatial
Relations between verbal and spatial skills and gesture production
Individuals differ greatly in how often they gesture when they speak. This study investigated relations between speakers’ verbal and spatial skills and their gesture rates. Two types of verbal skill were measured: semantic fluency, which is thought to index efficiency with lexical access, and phonemic fluency, which is thought to index efficiency with organizing the lexicon in novel ways. Spatial skill was measured with a visualization task. We hypothesized that individuals with low verbal skill but high spatial visualization skill would gesture most often, due to having mental images not closely linked to verbal forms. This hypothesis was supported for phonemic fluency, but not for semantic fluency. We also found that individuals with low phonemic fluency and individuals with high phonemic fluency produced representational gestures at higher rates than individuals with average phonemic fluency. The findings indicate that individual differences in gesture production are associated with individual differences in cognitive skills.
Keywords: verbal skill, spatial skill, individual differences
Published online: 01 May 2007
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.7.1.05hos
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.7.1.05hos
Cited by
Cited by 93 other publications
Abramov, Olga, Friederike Kern, Sofia Koutalidis, Ulrich Mertens, Katharina Rohlfing & Stefan Kopp
2021. The Relation Between Cognitive Abilities and the Distribution of Semantic Features Across Speech and Gesture in 4‐year‐olds.
Cognitive Science 45:7 
Aldugom, Mary, Kimberly Fenn & Susan Wagner Cook
2020. Gesture during math instruction specifically benefits learners with high visuospatial working memory capacity.
Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 5:1
Alibali, Martha W., Amelia Yeo, Autumn B. Hostetter & Sotaro Kita
2017.
In Why Gesture? [Gesture Studies, 7],
► pp. 15 ff.
Alviar, Camila, Rick Dale & Alexia Galati
2019. Complex Communication Dynamics: Exploring the Structure of an Academic Talk.
Cognitive Science 43:3
Arslan, Burcu & Tilbe Göksun
2021. Ageing, working memory, and mental imagery: Understanding gestural communication in younger and older adults.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 74:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
Arslan, Burcu & Tilbe Göksun
2022. Aging, Gesture Production, and Disfluency in Speech: A Comparison of Younger and Older Adults.
Cognitive Science 46:2
Austin, Elizabeth E. & Naomi Sweller
2018. Gesturing Along the Way: Adults’ and Preschoolers’ Communication of Route Direction Information.
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 42:2 ► pp. 199 ff.
AZIZ, JASMINE R. & ELENA NICOLADIS
2019. “My French is rusty”: Proficiency and bilingual gesture use in a majority English community.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 22:04 ► pp. 826 ff.
Bergmann, Kirsten
2013.
In Coverbal Synchrony in Human-Machine Interaction,
► pp. 223 ff.
Bergmann, Kirsten, Sebastian Kahl & Stefan Kopp
2013.
In Intelligent Virtual Agents [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 8108],
► pp. 203 ff.
Bergmann, Kirsten & Stefan Kopp
2009.
In Intelligent Virtual Agents [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5773],
► pp. 76 ff.
Bergmann, Kirsten & Stefan Kopp
2010.
In Gesture in Embodied Communication and Human-Computer Interaction [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5934],
► pp. 182 ff.
Bergmann, Kirsten & Stefan Kopp
2010. MODELING THE PRODUCTION OF COVERBAL ICONIC GESTURES BY LEARNING BAYESIAN DECISION NETWORKS.
Applied Artificial Intelligence 24:6 ► pp. 530 ff.
Bergmann, Kirsten, Stefan Kopp & Friederike Eyssel
2010.
In Intelligent Virtual Agents [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6356],
► pp. 104 ff.
Blume, Jessica, Kacie Wittke, Letitia Naigles & Ann M. Mastergeorge
2021. Language Growth in Young Children with Autism: Interactions Between Language Production and Social Communication.
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 51:2 ► pp. 644 ff.
Chu, Mingyuan & Sotaro Kita
2012.
In Gesture and Sign Language in Human-Computer Interaction and Embodied Communication [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7206],
► pp. 57 ff.
Clingan-Siverly, Sam, Paige M. Nelson, Tilbe Göksun & Ö. Ece Demir-Lira
2021. Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture.
Frontiers in Psychology 12
Clough, Sharice & Melissa C. Duff
2020. The Role of Gesture in Communication and Cognition: Implications for Understanding and Treating Neurogenic Communication Disorders.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 14
del Puy Carretero, María, Aitor Ardanza, Sara García, Helen Díez, David Oyarzun & Nuria Ruiz
2012.
In Articulated Motion and Deformable Objects [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7378],
► pp. 69 ff.
Demir-Lira, Özlem Ece, Salomi S. Asaridou, Anjali Raja Beharelle, Anna E. Holt, Susan Goldin-Meadow & Steven L. Small
2018. Functional neuroanatomy of gesture-speech integration in children varies with individual differences in gesture processing.
Developmental Science 21:5 ► pp. e12648 ff.
Elia, Iliada & Kyriacoulla Evangelou
2014. Gesture in a kindergarten mathematics classroom.
European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 22:1 ► pp. 45 ff.
Emir Özder, Levent, Demet Özer & Tilbe Göksun
2022. Gesture use in L1-Turkish and L2-English: Evidence from emotional narrative retellings.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ► pp. 174702182211266 ff.
Enfield, N. J., Jack Sidnell & Paul Kockelman
2014.
In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology,
► pp. 25 ff.
Galati, Alexia, Steven M. Weisberg, Nora S. Newcombe & Marios N. Avraamides
2018. When gestures show us the way: Co-thought gestures selectively facilitate navigation and spatial memory.
Spatial Cognition & Computation 18:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Gast, Volker
2023. The Temporal Alignment of Speech-Accompanying Eyebrow Movement and Voice Pitch: A Study Based on Late Night Show Interviews.
Behavioral Sciences 13:1 ► pp. 52 ff.
Gillespie, Maureen, Ariel N. James, Kara D. Federmeier & Duane G. Watson
2014. Verbal working memory predicts co-speech gesture: Evidence from individual differences.
Cognition 132:2 ► pp. 174 ff.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan
2014.
In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology,
► pp. 78 ff.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan & Martha Wagner Alibali
2013. Gesture's Role in Speaking, Learning, and Creating Language.
Annual Review of Psychology 64:1 ► pp. 257 ff.
Gruber, James, Jeanette King, Jen Hay & Lucy Johnston
2016. The hands, head, and brow.
Gesture 15:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Göksun, Tilbe, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Nora Newcombe & Thomas Shipley
2013. Individual differences in mental rotation: what does gesture tell us?.
Cognitive Processing 14:2 ► pp. 153 ff.
Güneş-Acar, Naziye, Ercan Alp, Aylin Küntay & Ayhan Aksu-Koç
2021. Contribution of working memory to gesture production in toddlers.
Cognitive Development 60 ► pp. 101113 ff.
Hogrefe, Katharina, Wolfram Ziegler, Nicole Weidinger & Georg Goldenberg
2017. Comprehensibility and neural substrate of communicative gestures in severe aphasia.
Brain and Language 171 ► pp. 62 ff.
Holler, Judith & Katie Wilkin
2011. Co-Speech Gesture Mimicry in the Process of Collaborative Referring During Face-to-Face Dialogue.
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 35:2 ► pp. 133 ff.
Hostetter, Autumn & Elina Mainela-Arnold
2015. Gestures Occur With Spatial and Motoric Knowledge: It's More Than Just Coincidence.
Perspectives on Language Learning and Education 22:2 ► pp. 42 ff.
Hostetter, Autumn B.
2014. Action Attenuates the Effect of Visibility on Gesture Rates.
Cognitive Science 38:7 ► pp. 1468 ff.
Hostetter, Autumn B. & Martha W. Alibali
2010. Language, gesture, action! A test of the Gesture as Simulated Action framework.
Journal of Memory and Language 63:2 ► pp. 245 ff.
Hostetter, Autumn B. & Catherine J. Skirving
2011. The Effect of Visual vs. Verbal Stimuli on Gesture Production.
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 35:3 ► pp. 205 ff.
Kartalkanat, Hazal & Tilbe Göksun
2020. The effects of observing different gestures during storytelling on the recall of path and event information in 5-year-olds and adults.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 189 ► pp. 104725 ff.
Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin, Sam-Po Law, Connie Ching-Yin Kwan, Christy Lai & Vivian Lam
2015. A Coding System with Independent Annotations of Gesture Forms and Functions During Verbal Communication: Development of a Database of Speech and GEsture (DoSaGE).
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 39:1 ► pp. 93 ff.
Kopp, Stefan
2017.
In Why Gesture? [Gesture Studies, 7],
► pp. 267 ff.
Kopp, Stefan & Kirsten Bergmann
2012.
In Human-Computer Interaction: The Agency Perspective [Studies in Computational Intelligence, 396],
► pp. 287 ff.
KOPP, STEFAN, KIRSTEN BERGMANN & IPKE WACHSMUTH
2008. MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATION FROM MULTIMODAL THINKING — TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED MODEL OF SPEECH AND GESTURE PRODUCTION.
International Journal of Semantic Computing 02:01 ► pp. 115 ff.
Krickel, Beate
2020. Extended cognition, the new mechanists' mutual manipulability criterion, and the challenge of trivial extendedness.
Mind & Language 35:4 ► pp. 539 ff.
Laurent, Angélique, Lisa Smithson & Elena Nicoladis
2020. Gesturers Tell a Story Creatively; Non-Gesturers Tell it like it Happened.
Language Learning and Development 16:3 ► pp. 292 ff.
Lavelli, Manuela & Marinella Majorano
2016. Spontaneous Gesture Production and Lexical Abilities in Children With Specific Language Impairment in a Naming Task.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 59:4 ► pp. 784 ff.
Liben, Lynn S., Adam E. Christensen & Kim A. Kastens
2010.
In Spatial Cognition VII [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6222],
► pp. 95 ff.
Littlemore, Jeannette
2019.
In Metaphors in the Mind,
Ma, Sai, Guangsa Jin & Michael Barlow
2021. Representational gestures correlated with meaning-associated aspects of L2 speech performance.
Gesture 20:3 ► pp. 376 ff.
Maessen, Babette, Ellen Rombouts, Bea Maes & Inge Zink
2022. The relation between gestures and stuttering in individuals with Down syndrome.
Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities 35:3 ► pp. 761 ff.
Mainela-Arnold, Elina, Martha W. Alibali, Autumn B. Hostetter & Julia L. Evans
2014. Gesture-speech integration in children with specific language impairment.
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 49:6 ► pp. 761 ff.
Millman, Zachary B., James Goss, Jason Schiffman, Johana Mejias, Tina Gupta & Vijay A. Mittal
2014. Mismatch and lexical retrieval gestures are associated with visual information processing, verbal production, and symptomatology in youth at high risk for psychosis.
Schizophrenia Research 158:1-3 ► pp. 64 ff.
Nagels, Arne, Tilo Kircher, Miriam Steines, Michael Grosvald & Benjamin Straube
2015. A brief self-rating scale for the assessment of individual differences in gesture perception and production.
Learning and Individual Differences 39 ► pp. 73 ff.
Nagpal, Jaya, Elena Nicoladis & Paula Marentette
2011. Predicting individual differences in L2 speakers’ gestures.
International Journal of Bilingualism 15:2 ► pp. 205 ff.
Nathan, Mitchell J.
2017.
In Why Gesture? [Gesture Studies, 7],
► pp. 175 ff.
Nathan, Mitchell J. & Chelsea V.J. Martinez
2015. Gesture as model enactment: the role of gesture in mental model construction and inference making when learning from text.
Learning: Research and Practice 1:1 ► pp. 4 ff.
Navarretta, Costanza
2014. The Automatic Identification of the Producers of Co-occurring Communicative Behaviours.
Cognitive Computation 6:4 ► pp. 689 ff.
Nicoladis, Elena, Trevor Luk & Shireen Gill
2020. Out-group gestures can lower self-esteem.
Gesture 19:2-3 ► pp. 223 ff.
Nicoladis, Elena, Paula Marentette & Samuel Navarro
2016. Gesture Frequency Linked Primarily to Story Length in 4–10-Year Old Children’s Stories.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 45:2 ► pp. 189 ff.
NICOLADIS, ELENA, JAYA NAGPAL, PAULA MARENTETTE & BRANDON HAUER
2018. Gesture frequency is linked to story-telling style: evidence from bilinguals.
Language and Cognition 10:4 ► pp. 641 ff.
Otumfuor, Beryl Ann & Martha Carr
2017. Teacher spatial skills are linked to differences in geometry instruction.
British Journal of Educational Psychology 87:4 ► pp. 683 ff.
Parrill, Fey, John Cabot, Hannah Kent, Kelly Chen & Ann Payneau
2016. Do people gesture more when instructed to?.
Gesture 15:3 ► pp. 357 ff.
PARRILL, FEY, BRITTANY LAVANTY, AUSTIN BENNETT, ALAYNA KLCO & OZLEM ECE DEMIR-LIRA
2018. The relationship between character viewpoint gesture and narrative structure in children.
Language and Cognition 10:3 ► pp. 408 ff.
Plummer, Julia D., Corinne A. Bower & Lynn S. Liben
2016. The role of perspective taking in how children connect reference frames when explaining astronomical phenomena.
International Journal of Science Education 38:3 ► pp. 345 ff.
Pyers, Jennie E., Rachel Magid, Tamar H. Gollan & Karen Emmorey
2021. Gesture Helps, Only If You Need It: Inhibiting Gesture Reduces Tip‐of‐the‐Tongue Resolution for Those With Weak Short‐Term Memory.
Cognitive Science 45:1
Rombouts, Ellen, Liesl Leenen, Bea Maes & Inge Zink
2022. Gesture–speech integration is related to vocabulary skills in children with developmental language disorder, Williams syndrome and typical development.
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders
Salle, Alexander
2020. Analyzing Self-Explanations in Mathematics: Gestures and Written Notes Do Matter.
Frontiers in Psychology 11
Schmalenbach, Simon B., Jutta Billino, Tilo Kircher, Bianca M. van Kemenade & Benjamin Straube
2017. Links between Gestures and Multisensory Processing: Individual Differences Suggest a Compensation Mechanism.
Frontiers in Psychology 8
Schubotz, Louise, Aslı Özyürek & Judith Holler
2022. Individual differences in working memory and semantic fluency predict younger and older adults' multimodal recipient design in an interactive spatial task.
Acta Psychologica 229 ► pp. 103690 ff.
SMITHSON, LISA & ELENA NICOLADIS
2013. Verbal memory resources predict iconic gesture use among monolinguals and bilinguals.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16:4 ► pp. 934 ff.
Smithson, Lisa & Elena Nicoladis
2014. Lending a Hand to Imagery? The Impact of Visuospatial Working Memory Interference Upon Iconic Gesture Production in a Narrative Task.
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 38:2 ► pp. 247 ff.
So, Wing-Chee, Ming Lui, Tze-Kiu Wong & Long-Tin Sit
2015. The Use of Hand Gestures to Communicate About Nonpresent Objects in Mind Among Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 58:2 ► pp. 373 ff.
So, Wing-Chee, Priscilla Lok-Chee Shum & Miranda Kit-Yi Wong
2015. Gesture is More Effective than Spatial Language in Encoding Spatial Information.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 68:12 ► pp. 2384 ff.
SO, WING-CHEE & KIT-YI MIRANDA WONG
2018. Tracing the development of spatially modulated gestures in the manual modality in nonsigning Chinese-speaking children.
Applied Psycholinguistics 39:3 ► pp. 527 ff.
So, Wing-Chee, Miranda Kit-Yi Wong, Ming Lui & Virginia Yip
2015. The development of co-speech gesture and its semantic integration with speech in 6- to 12-year-old children with autism spectrum disorders.
Autism 19:8 ► pp. 956 ff.
Sowińska, Agnieszka & Monika Boruta-Żywiczyńska
2020. Gestures in patients’ presentation of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS).
Gesture 19:1 ► pp. 97 ff.
Steines, Miriam, Arne Nagels, Tilo Kircher & Benjamin Straube
2021. The role of the left and right inferior frontal gyrus in processing metaphoric and unrelated co-speech gestures.
NeuroImage 237 ► pp. 118182 ff.
Stites, Lauren & Şeyda Özçalışkan
2021. The Time is at Hand: Literacy Predicts Changes in Children’s Gestures About Time.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 50:5 ► pp. 967 ff.
Suppes, Alexandra, Christina Y. Tzeng & Laura Galguera
2015. Using and Seeing Co-speech Gesture in a Spatial Task.
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 39:3 ► pp. 241 ff.
Trowbridge, Francis A.
2014. Gesture as a Window and a Tool.
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 58:1 ► pp. 1929 ff.
Tscholl, Michael, Jason Morphew & Robb Lindgren
2021. Inferences on enacted understanding: using immersive technologies to assess intuitive physical science knowledge.
Information and Learning Sciences 122:7/8 ► pp. 503 ff.
Tutton, Mark
2011. How speakers gesture when encoding location with English on and French sur.
Journal of Pragmatics 43:14 ► pp. 3431 ff.
Vajrabhaya, Prakaiwan & Eric Pederson
2018. Teasing apart listener-sensitivity.
Gesture 17:1 ► pp. 65 ff.
Wagner, Petra, Zofia Malisz & Stefan Kopp
2014. Gesture and speech in interaction: An overview.
Speech Communication 57 ► pp. 209 ff.
Walkington, Candace, Mitchell J. Nathan, Min Wang & Kelsey Schenck
2022. The Effect of Cognitive Relevance of Directed Actions on Mathematical Reasoning.
Cognitive Science 46:9
Walkington, Candace, Dawn Woods, Mitchell J. Nathan, Geoffrey Chelule & Min Wang
2019. Does restricting hand gestures impair mathematical reasoning?.
Learning and Instruction 64 ► pp. 101225 ff.
Wartenburger, Isabell, Esther Kühn, Uta Sassenberg, Manja Foth, Elizabeth A. Franz & Elke van der Meer
2010. On the relationship between fluid intelligence, gesture production, and brain structure.
Intelligence 38:1 ► pp. 193 ff.
Wright, Vince & Ken Smith
2017. Children’s schemes for anticipating the validity of nets for solids.
Mathematics Education Research Journal 29:3 ► pp. 369 ff.
Wu, Ying Choon & Seana Coulson
2014. Co-speech iconic gestures and visuo-spatial working memory.
Acta Psychologica 153 ► pp. 39 ff.
Wu, Ying Choon & Seana Coulson
2015. Iconic Gestures Facilitate Discourse Comprehension in Individuals With Superior Immediate Memory for Body Configurations.
Psychological Science 26:11 ► pp. 1717 ff.
Wu, Ying Choon, Horst M. Müller & Seana Coulson
2022. Visuospatial Working Memory and Understanding Co-Speech Iconic Gestures: Do Gestures Help to Paint a Mental Picture?.
Discourse Processes 59:4 ► pp. 275 ff.
ZVAIGZNE, MEGHAN, YURIKO OSHIMA-TAKANE & MAKIKO HIRAKAWA
2019. How does language proficiency affect children’s iconic gesture use?.
Applied Psycholinguistics 40:2 ► pp. 555 ff.
Özer, Demet & Tilbe Göksun
2020. Gesture Use and Processing: A Review on Individual Differences in Cognitive Resources.
Frontiers in Psychology 11
Özer, Demet & Tilbe Göksun
2020. Visual-spatial and verbal abilities differentially affect processing of gestural vs. spoken expressions.
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 35:7 ► pp. 896 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.