Communicative gestures in aphasia.
Publication/Presentation Date
3-1-1986
Abstract
Gestural communications of 10 mild and moderate aphasics and five controls were examined in two conditions: Face-to-face informal dyadic conversation and restricted visual access between speaker and listener. Gestural production was significantly reduced with restriction of visual access, supporting the posited communicative function of the hand and arm gestures investigated in this study. No differences were found between aphasic and control subjects in the rate of gestural communication in the natural condition of face-to-face interaction. Moderate aphasics, however, were found to produce proportionally fewer of the complex semantic modifying and relational communicative gestures and more nonspecific, nonconsensually shared, unclear gestures. Gestural complexity was significantly negatively correlated with measures of linguistic impairment for the aphasics. The relationship between the frequency and complexity of communicative gestures and concurrent verbalizations was also examined. The findings of this study provide confirmation for the view that there is an identifiable class of gestures utilized by aphasics for communication, aphasics are impaired in their gestural communicative competence in natural conditions of communication, and the quality of aphasics' gestural communications parallels changes in their verbal communication patterns.
Volume
27
Issue
2
First Page
345
Last Page
359
ISSN
0093-934X
Published In/Presented At
Glosser, G., Wiener, M., & Kaplan, E. (1986). Communicative gestures in aphasia. Brain and language, 27(2), 345–359. https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934x(86)90024-6
Disciplines
Medicine and Health Sciences | Psychiatry
PubMedID
2420412
Department(s)
Department of Psychiatry
Document Type
Article