A Coding System With Independent Annotations Of Gesture Forms And Functions During Verbal Communication: Development Of A Database Of Speech And Gesture (Dosage)

Keywords

Cantonese; Database; Gesture form; Gesture function; Nonverbal communication

Abstract

Gestures are commonly used together with spoken language in human communication. One major limitation of gesture investigations in the existing literature lies in the fact that the coding of forms and functions of gestures has not been clearly differentiated. This paper first described a recently developed Database of Speech and GEsture based on independent annotation of gesture forms and functions among 119 neurologically unimpaired right-handed native speakers of Cantonese (divided into three age and two education levels), and presented findings of an investigation examining how gesture use was related to age and linguistic performance. Consideration of these two factors, for which normative data are currently very limited or lacking in the literature, is relevant and necessary when one evaluates gesture employment among individuals with and without language impairment. Three speech tasks, including monologue of a personally important event, sequential description, and story-telling, were used for elicitation. The EUDICO Linguistic ANnotator software was used to independently annotate each participant’s linguistic information of the transcript, forms of gestures used, and the function for each gesture. About one-third of the subjects did not use any co-verbal gestures. While the majority of gestures were non-content-carrying, which functioned mainly for reinforcing speech intonation or controlling speech flow, the content-carrying ones were used to enhance speech content. Furthermore, individuals who are younger or linguistically more proficient tended to use fewer gestures, suggesting that normal speakers gesture differently as a function of age and linguistic performance.

Publication Date

3-1-2015

Publication Title

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

Volume

39

Issue

1

Number of Pages

93-111

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-014-0200-6

Socpus ID

84922004745 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84922004745

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