Nicole Redwine (2001)

Previous research has questioned the value of human gestures. The debate has always included such problems as how much and what kind of information they convey or whether or not they replicate what is being said. Some studies theorize that gestures occur at the same time as speech; others postulate that they anticipate speech (Morrel-Samuels & Krauss, 1992). Researchers such as McNeill (1985) have stated that gestures play an integral role in verbal communication, as they parallel their linguistic units and are affected by speech aphasias. In addition, gestures have been named and classified in terms of the type of information they convey (Kendon, 1993). For example, iconic gestures generally depict some sort of pictorial action, whereas beat gestures simply show a point of emphasis in speech. However, the question of whether or not gestures alone convey meaning still remains largely unanswered.

In addition, research on biological motion and perceptual cues in point light research has added immense amounts of knowledge to the field of psychology. For example, Montepare and Zebrowitz (1993) have thoroughly researched the notion that personal attributes can be determined from watching someone's gait. Models, walking across a dark room with reflective lights on only their major joints, were videotaped and then watched by participants. They were able to accurately and reliably determine factors such as age, sex, happiness, dominance, etc., and this phenomenon occurs across cultures as well.

Based on the above research, I combined the notions human gestures and biological movement to determine if gestures alone can be understood. I videotaped a model telling a series of ten short stories, most of them well-known by members of our society, such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs. The model was wearing a black face mask, white gloves, black shirt so that standing in front of a blacklight only her arms and hands were visible. By removing other distracting visual cues (such as facial expressions and lip movements), one focuses on the gestures themselves. In addition, in the absence of sound, participants are forced to rely solely on the gestures for any meaningful cues. The participants were then asked to determine out of a list of four which story the model was telling.

My study included a total of 49 participants. Descriptive statistics yielded the average number of correct answers as 7.3 with a standard deviation of 2.89. With a hypothesized mean of 2.5, a one sample t-test showed this as significant (p<.0001). Participants did significantly better than 25%; moreover, I counted and classified the rough number of gestures for each story and correlated them to the total number answered correctly for each story clip. The clips that showed the highest number of iconic gestures were hypothesized to be the stories guessed correctly the most, which turned out to be true, with a correlational value of .652 (Pearson r; p < .03).

In sum, my study adds to our knowledge of human gestures in showing that participants were able to correctly guess much better than chance which story was being told in a condition where sound and facial cues were absent. Further research could focus more specifically on what it is about these gestures that participants understood.