TALKING TO EACH OTHERlanguage may have evolved through gestures first, with spoken language
only emerging later on. Consistent with this idea is the fact that Broca’s
area in the brain is involved in controlling hand-gestures as well as its
role in language.
Recent studies have confirmed that gesticulations aren’t just a silly
habit, they actually play an important role in helping us communicate.
Consider a 2004 study by Susan Wagner at the University of Chicago,
which involved videoing 72 students while they explained maths
problems they’d solved earlier. Crucially, during each explanation, the
students had the additional task of remembering letters or arrange-
ments of dots presented to them before they began their explanation.
Students who were allowed to use gestures during their explanations
subsequently recalled more of these items to be remembered than
students who were prevented from gesturing. The finding suggests that
using their hands made the explanation part of the task easier, thus
freeing up more mental resources for the memory part of the task.
As well as aiding the thought processes underlying speech, gesturing
can be beneficial to the listener. Research by Pierre Feyereisen at the
University of Louvain suggests that people find it easier to remember
statements that are accompanied by gestures, as long as the gestures are
appropriate to what is being said. Feyereisen showed 59 students a video
Politicians will often use exaggerated gestures to reinforce a point or to fire
up an audience. This is Edward Kennedy in 1962 trying to win the Democratic
nomination to run for Congress.