Why people gesture when they speak

Jana M. Iverson () and Susan Goldin-Meadow
Additional contact information
Jana M. Iverson: Indiana University
Susan Goldin-Meadow: University of Chicago

Nature, 1998, vol. 396, issue 6708, 228-228

Abstract: Abstract People use gestures when they talk, but is this behaviour learned from watching others move their hands when talking? Individuals who are blind from birth never see such gestures and so have no model for gesturing. But here we show that congenitally blind speakers gesture despite their lack of a visual model, even when they speak to a blind listener. Gestures therefore require neither a model nor an observant partner.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/24300 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:396:y:1998:i:6708:d:10.1038_24300

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/24300

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().