Co-verbal gestures among speakers with aphasia: Influence of aphasia severity, linguistic and semantic skills, and hemiplegia on gesture employment in oral discourse

Abstract

The use of co-verbal gestures is common in human communication and has been reported to assist word retrieval and to facilitate verbal interactions. This study systematically investigated the impact of aphasia severity, integrity of semantic processing, and hemiplegia on the use of co-verbal gestures, with reference to gesture forms and functions, by 131 normal speakers, 48 individuals with aphasia and their controls. All participants were native Cantonese speakers. It was found that the severity of aphasia and verbal-semantic impairment was associated with significantly more co-verbal gestures. However, there was no relationship between right-sided hemiplegia and gesture employment. Moreover, significantly more gestures were employed by the speakers with aphasia, but about 10% of them did not gesture. Among those who used gestures, content-carrying gestures, including iconic, metaphoric, deictic gestures, and emblems, served the function of enhancing language content and providing information additional to the language content. As for the non-content carrying gestures, beats were used primarily for reinforcing speech prosody or guiding speech flow, while non-identifiable gestures were associated with assisting lexical retrieval or with no specific functions. The above findings would enhance our understanding of the use of various forms of co-verbal gestures in aphasic discourse production and their functions. Speech-language pathologists may also refer to the current annotation system and the results to guide clinical evaluation and remediation of gestures in aphasia.

A Comparison of Coverbal Gesture Use in Oral Discourse Among Speakers With Fluent and Nonfluent Aphasia

“…Previous studies on PWA's gesture use have suggested that PWA tend to produce a greater number of gestures per word than healthy speakers (e.g., Kong, Law, Wat, et al, 2015;Wat, 2013). Some investigators also argued that the semantic complexity of gestures was lower in PWA (e.g., Ahlsén & Schwarz, 2013).…”

“…This observation supported the sketch model (de Ruiter, 2000) and provided evidence for independent deficits of gesture and verbal production. Recent studies by Kong, Law, Wat, and Lai (2015) and Wat (2013) further corroborated the sketch model by concluding that the rate of gesture use among 48 PWA (with preserved nonverbal semantic abilities) was higher than that of their controls, and a higher proportion of PWA used coverbal gestures as compared with the control counterparts. Moreover, although the presence of hemiplegia in PWA did not affect their rate of using gestures, higher aphasia severity, weaker linguistic skills (as reflected by fewer complete and simple sentences), and lower degree of verbal semantic processing integrity were found to associate with an increased proportion of coverbal gesture use.…”

“…Recent studies by Kong, Law, Wat, and Lai (2015) and Wat (2013) further corroborated the sketch model by concluding that the rate of gesture use among 48 PWA (with preserved nonverbal semantic abilities) was higher than that of their controls, and a higher proportion of PWA used coverbal gestures as compared with the control counterparts. Moreover, although the presence of hemiplegia in PWA did not affect their rate of using gestures, higher aphasia severity, weaker linguistic skills (as reflected by fewer complete and simple sentences), and lower degree of verbal semantic processing integrity were found to associate with an increased proportion of coverbal gesture use.Although between individuals with and without aphasia (e.g., Ahlsén & Schwarz, 2013;Kong, Law, Wat, et al, 2015;Wat, 2013), relatively few reports involved how gesture use varied across aphasia syndromes. Due to the fact that types of aphasia partly contribute to variability within the population of PWA, aphasia syndromes might hypothetically affect gesture use in PWA .…”

“…Although between individuals with and without aphasia (e.g., Ahlsén & Schwarz, 2013;Kong, Law, Wat, et al, 2015;Wat, 2013), relatively few reports involved how gesture use varied across aphasia syndromes. Due to the fact that types of aphasia partly contribute to variability within the population of PWA, aphasia syndromes might hypothetically affect gesture use in PWA .…”

Cantonese AphasiaBank: An annotated database of spoken discourse and co-verbal gestures by healthy and language-impaired native Cantonese speakers

“…Subsequent analyses in terms of the quantity of gestures and how their forms and functions are affected by aphasia can be conducted; this would allow a better understanding of whether and how speakers may employ gestures to enrich spoken discourse. A recent study utilizing a subset of the data bank to answer the above questions has been reported (Kong, Law, Wat, & Lai, 2015). 2.…”