Schedule of Events | Symposia

Encouraging Gesture for Increased Macro-linguistic Narrative Production

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Ted Jenkins¹; ¹Rhode Island College, ²New York University

A. Introduction: Manual hand movements are often associated with reducing the cognitive load associated with micro-linguistic language production tasks. However, it is not known if encouraging these gestures can lead to macro-linguistic improvements for speakers. B. Methods: 18 adults (18-45 years old) without any neurological damage were recruited to retell an unfamiliar story under two conditions (i.e., T1 and T2). In both conditions, participants were presented with a series of pictures outlining the story and then asked to retell the story. During T1, the participant was asked to retell the story; during T2, participants were asked to clap 30 times before retelling the story. A total of at least 7 days elapsed between T1 and T2. Measures of story quality (i.e., lexical diversity, sentential subordination, and narrative organization) were used to compare stories retold in T1 and T2 using paired sample t testing. C. Results: Baseline data for T1 and T2 (i.e., short story retell at beginning of T1 and T2) showed no significant gesture or story quality before each session. Narrative quality and gesture frequency was significantly higher in T2 than T1 for lexical diversity, sentential subordination, and narrative organization (p<.05; see appendix A). D. Conclusion: The presence of a gestural training (i.e., T2) seemed to increase gesture and linguistic production compared to the control (i.e., T1). Increasing/encouraging gesture is thought to involve more cognitive resources, increase linguistic performance, and may be a valuable modality for language intervention.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Other