Two new publications!
Two different publications out, on two exciting topics! First one asks: does it matter to our recall of what is said when a gesture occurs? (Yes, it does.) And the second: Italians and Swedes gesture differently. Why? (No, it’s not what you think! It’s not about the frequency! It’s the way they think about stories.)
Early or synchronized gestures facilitate speech recall—a study based on motion capture data
Nirme, J., Gulz, A., Haake, M., & Gullberg, M. (2024).
Temporal co-ordination between speech and gestures has been thoroughly studied in natural production. In most cases gesture strokes precede or coincide with the stressed syllable in words that they are semantically associated with.
Article in Frontiers- frontiersin.org
Providing evidence for a well-worn stereotype: Italians and Swedes do gesture differently
Graziano, M., Gullberg, M. (2024)
Across cultures and languages spontaneous speech is often accompanied by gestures. It is a popular belief that people in Italy gesture more than people in Northern Europe, such as in Sweden. Despite this general assumption few studies empirically investigate cultural differences in gesture frequency and gesture function under similar circumstances. This study compares the spoken and gestural behaviours of Italian and Swedish speakers, assumed to represent gesture-rich vs. gesture-sparse cultures.