INTERPERSONAL AND INTRAPERSONAL FUNCTIONS OF CONVERSATIONAL HAND GESTURES

Robert M. Krauss




Conversational gestures (unplanned, articulate hand movements that often accompany spontaneous speech) have traditionally been assumed to amplify or modulate the information conveyed by speech, and hence to serve a communicative function. Recent research, much of it done in this lab, has undermined the plausibility of this view, and suggests that the contribution these gestures make to communication ordinarily is relatively small (Krauss, Dushay, Chen, & Bilous, 1995; Krauss, Morrel-Samuels, & Colasante, 1991) . However, we also have found that gesturing plays an important role in speech production by facilitating lexical retrieval (Chawla & Krauss, 1994; Morrel-Samuels & Krauss, 1992; Rauscher, Krauss, & Chen, 1996) . Current research is aimed at understanding the mechanisms that underlie this facilitation effect, and also at explicating the kinds of information that gestures convey interpersonally. For a review of this program, see Krauss, Chen, & Chawla (1996) .


Chawla, P. & Krauss, R.M. (1994). Gesture and speech in spontaneous and rehearsed narratives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 580-601.

Krauss, R. M., Chen, Y., & Chawla, P. (1996). Nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication: What do conversational hand gestures tell us? In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (389-450). Tampa: Academic Press.

Krauss, R. M., Dushay, R., Chen, Y., & Rauscher, F. (1995). The communicative value of conversational hand gestures. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 533-552.

Krauss, R. M., Morrel-Samuels, P. & Colasante, C. (1991). Do conversational hand gestures communicate? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 743-754.

Morrel-Samuels, P. & Krauss, R.M. (1992). Word familiarity predicts temporal asynchrony of hand gestures and speech. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 18, 615-623.

Rausher, F., Krauss, R.M., & Chen, Y. (1996). Gesture, speech and lexical access: The role of lexical movements in speech production. Psychological Science, 7, p.226-231