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.
2025. Individual differences in representational gesture production are associated with cognitive and empathy skills. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 78:1 ► pp. 85 ff.
Davis, Robert O., Joseph Vincent, Eun Byul Yang, Yong Jik Lee & Ji Hae Lee
2025. The Exploration of Combining Hologram-like Images and Pedagogical Agent Gesturing. Information 16:5 ► pp. 350 ff.
Fares, Mireille, Catherine Pelachaud & Nicolas Obin
2025. TranSTYLer: Multimodal behavioural style transfer for facial and body gestures generation. Speech Communication 174 ► pp. 103286 ff.
Khan, Maryam, Sana Zeb, Rabia Batool & Agata Gasiorowska
2025. Non-verbal communication questionnaire: a measure to assess effective interaction. Frontiers in Psychology 15
Yılmaz, Begüm, Reyhan Furman, Tilbe Göksun & Terry Eskenazi
2025. Speech Disfluencies and Hand Gestures as Metacognitive Cues. Cognitive Science 49:8
Özçalışkan, Şeyda & Susan Goldin-Meadow
2025. Does gesture follow speech in describing metaphorical motion events over developmental time?. Brain and Language 270 ► pp. 105620 ff.
Alibali, Martha W., Rui Meng, Andrea Marquardt Donovan, Meixia Ding & Amelia Yeo
2024. How teachers make connections among ideas in mathematics instruction. In Natural Behavior [Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 66], ► pp. 137 ff.
Boden, Ulrich J., Friederike Kern, Sofia Koutalidis, Olga Abramov, Anne Nemeth, Stefan Kopp & Katharina J. Rohlfing
2024. Development of an Intelligent Tutoring System That Assesses Internal Visualization Skills in Engineering Using Multimodal Triangulation. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies 17 ► pp. 1585 ff.
Urena, Katelyn & Brielle C. Stark
2024. Characterizing iconic gesture during narratives in chronic traumatic brain injury recovery. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 18
Wilson, Jack
2024. Pragmatics, Utterance Meaning, and Representational Gesture,
Çapan, Dicle, Reyhan Furman, Tilbe Göksun & Terry Eskenazi
2024. Hands of confidence: When gestures increase confidence in spatial problem-solving. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 77:2 ► pp. 257 ff.
ARSLAN, Burcu, Demet ÖZER & Tilbe GÖKSUN
2023. Grammatical Complexity and Gesture Production of Younger and Older Adults. Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi 34:2 ► pp. 201 ff.
Emir Özder, Levent, Demet Özer & Tilbe Göksun
2023. Gesture use in L1-Turkish and L2-English: Evidence from emotional narrative retellings. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 76:8 ► pp. 1797 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.
Hyusein, Gyulten, Tilbe Göksun & Silva Ibrahimi
2023. The creative interplay between hand gestures, convergent thinking, and mental imagery. PLOS ONE 18:4 ► pp. e0283859 ff.
Iriskhanova, Olga, Maria Kiose, Anna Leonteva & Olga Agafonova
2023. Multimodal languaging: Reification profiles in language and gesture. Linguistic Frontiers 6:2 ► pp. 78 ff.
Kita, Sotaro & Karen Emmorey
2023. Gesture links language and cognition for spoken and signed languages. Nature Reviews Psychology 2:7 ► pp. 407 ff.
Oppici, Luca, Brian Mathias, Susanne Narciss & Antje Proske
2023. Benefits of Enacting and Observing Gestures on Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Behavioral Sciences 13:11 ► pp. 920 ff.
Rombouts, Ellen, Liesl Leenen, Bea Maes & Inge Zink
2023. 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 58:1 ► pp. 206 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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Alviar, Camila, Rick Dale & Alexia Galati
2019. Complex Communication Dynamics: Exploring the Structure of an Academic Talk. Cognitive Science 43:3
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.
Littlemore, Jeannette
2019. Metaphors in the Mind,
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.
2019. How does language proficiency affect children’s iconic gesture use?. Applied Psycholinguistics 40:2 ► pp. 555 ff.
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.
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
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.
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.
2018. The relationship between character viewpoint gesture and narrative structure in children. Language and Cognition 10:3 ► pp. 408 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.
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.
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.
Parrill, Fey, John Cabot, Hannah Kent, Kelly Chen & Ann Payneau
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
Elia, Iliada & Kyriacoulla Evangelou
2014. Gesture in a kindergarten mathematics classroom. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 22:1 ► pp. 45 ff.
Enfield, N. J., Jack Sidnell & Paul Kockelman
2014. System and function. In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 25 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. Language and the manual modality The communicative resilience of the human species. In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 78 ff.
Hostetter, Autumn B.
2014. Action Attenuates the Effect of Visibility on Gesture Rates. Cognitive Science 38:7 ► pp. 1468 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.
Navarretta, Costanza
2014. The Automatic Identification of the Producers of Co-occurring Communicative Behaviours. Cognitive Computation 6:4 ► pp. 689 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.
Wagner, Petra, Zofia Malisz & Stefan Kopp
2014. Gesture and speech in interaction: An overview. Speech Communication 57 ► pp. 209 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.
Bergmann, Kirsten
2013. Co-speech Gesture Generation for Embodied Agents and its Effects on User Evaluation. In Coverbal Synchrony in Human-Machine Interaction, ► pp. 223 ff.
Bergmann, Kirsten, Sebastian Kahl & Stefan Kopp
2013. Modeling the Semantic Coordination of Speech and Gesture under Cognitive and Linguistic Constraints. In Intelligent Virtual Agents [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 8108], ► pp. 203 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.
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.
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.
Chu, Mingyuan & Sotaro Kita
2012. The Role of Spontaneous Gestures in Spatial Problem Solving. In Gesture and Sign Language in Human-Computer Interaction and Embodied Communication [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7206], ► pp. 57 ff.
del Puy Carretero, María, Aitor Ardanza, Sara García, Helen Díez, David Oyarzun & Nuria Ruiz
2012. Improving Gestural Communication in Virtual Characters. In Articulated Motion and Deformable Objects [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7378], ► pp. 69 ff.
Kopp, Stefan & Kirsten Bergmann
2012. Individualized Gesture Production in Embodied Conversational Agents. In Human-Computer Interaction: The Agency Perspective [Studies in Computational Intelligence, 396], ► pp. 287 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 B. & Catherine J. Skirving
2011. The Effect of Visual vs. Verbal Stimuli on Gesture Production. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 35:3 ► pp. 205 ff.
Nagpal, Jaya, Elena Nicoladis & Paula Marentette
2011. Predicting individual differences in L2 speakers’ gestures. International Journal of Bilingualism 15:2 ► pp. 205 ff.
Tutton, Mark
2011. How speakers gesture when encoding location with English on and French sur. Journal of Pragmatics 43:14 ► pp. 3431 ff.
Bergmann, Kirsten, Stefan Kopp & Friederike Eyssel
2010. Individualized Gesturing Outperforms Average Gesturing – Evaluating Gesture Production in Virtual Humans. In Intelligent Virtual Agents [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6356], ► pp. 104 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.
Liben, Lynn S., Adam E. Christensen & Kim A. Kastens
2010. Gestures in Geology: The Roles of Spatial Skills, Expertise, and Communicative Context. In Spatial Cognition VII [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6222], ► pp. 95 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.
Bergmann, Kirsten & Stefan Kopp
2009. GNetIc – Using Bayesian Decision Networks for Iconic Gesture Generation. In Intelligent Virtual Agents [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5773], ► pp. 76 ff.
Bergmann, Kirsten & Stefan Kopp
2010. Systematicity and Idiosyncrasy in Iconic Gesture Use: Empirical Analysis and Computational Modeling. 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.
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.
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