Características de la vulnerabilidad en la vejez

In general there are two broad classifications of hand movements that accompany speech. There are those gestures that do not relate to the semantic meaning of the verbal message and those that

do relate to the semantic meaning of the verbal message. These will be referred to as marking

movements and meaningful movements, respectively. The various classification labels, citations, and examples for these gesture types are described in Tables 1 and 2.

The most frequently studied gesture types are those in the meaningful movement category such as deictic and iconic gestures. Deictic gestures are pointing gestures that can be used to point to both concrete and abstract referents. Deictic gestures have a relatively fixed manual construction in Western culture which consists of extending the index finger with the other three fingers folded back to the palm. Deictic gestures are also the first type of gesture to be used by children. Although the present investigation focuses on the use of deictic gestures, other types of gestures are described to provide background information for the literature review.

Iconic gestures are movements that carry some semantic meaning related to the accompanying spoken message. A similar gesture type is a metaphoric gesture. Metaphoric gestures carry more abstract semantic meaning in contrast to iconic gestures that “represent body movements, movements of objects or people in space, and shapes of objects or people...concretely and relatively transparently” (Goldin-Meadow, 2003, p. 7). Yet the distinction between degree of iconicity for iconic and metaphoric gestures is ambiguous. As Krauss and Hadar state (1999, p. 100), simply because the distinction is widely accepted does not make it useful. For that reason, iconic and metaphoric gestures are often collapsed into a single

32

category and are referred to as representational or lexical gestures. Consequently, in this document both iconic and metaphoric gestures are defined as representational gestures. Representational gestures are idiosyncratic and have no fixed form or movement. A single movement of a representational gesture may hold multiple meanings as well.

It is also important to note that while a representational gesture is related to the semantic content of the accompanying speech, the gesture need not have a one-to-one correspondence to a single word. In fact, it is common for a representational gesture to offer additional information that is not present in the speech stream (e.g., spreading hands wide in front of you to indicate the concept of large while stating he gave me a present). Likewise, an individual can use a deictic gesture to point to indicate information that is not present in the speech stream (e.g., pointing to the door while stating he went that way). Conversely, a gesture can directly match the information communicated in the speech and be redundant with the spoken message (e.g., pointing towards the ground while stating the elevator went down).

Marking gestures are less often investigated due to the assumption that they do not carry semantic meaning and are therefore less integrated with the speech system. Marking gestures are most often referred to as beat gestures. Traditionally these gestures are thought to mark the rhythm of an utterance (Efron, 1941; Ekman & Freisen, 1972; McNeill, 1992). However, as Feyereisen (2000, p. 150) states “evidence of their connections with prosody in normal or brain-damaged subjects is still lacking”. Beat gestures are composed of short, quick movements and are the last type of gestures to emerge in development due to the presumed connection to higher-level discourse formulation (McNeill, 1992). Although marking gestures are thought to correspond with the rhythm of speech, they are not the focus of the present project because of the difficulty of controlling their presence in discourse. The goals of the present

33

project will be extended to more natural spontaneous speech and a variety of gestures in the future.

Table 1 Gesture Taxonomy: Marking Movements

Gesture Description Gesture Type Citation

Short and fast movements of the hands that mark the rhythm of speech or emphatically mark a lexical item or topic change.

Beats nondepictive speech markers batons motor McNeill, 1992

Rime & Schiaratura, 1991 Efron, 1941; Ekman & Freisen, 1972

Krauss, Chen, & Gottesman, 2000

34

Table 2 Gesture Taxonomy: Meaningful Movements

Gesture Description Gesture Type Citation Example

Movements of the hand or finger that point toward an object that is either concrete or abstract.

Deictic Ekman & Friesen, 1969;

McNeill, 1992; Rime & Schiaraturan, 1991;

Pointing to a ball while requesting. Pointing in the direction the event being described. Movements that reflect

the content of the verbal output. Often indicates qualities of an object, person, or action such as movement, size, shape, and position. Iconic symbolic illustrators representational conversational

McNeill, 1992; Rime & Schiaratura, 1991

Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1988; 2002

Cohen, 1977; Ekman & Friesen, 1969

Iverson, Capirci,

Longobardi, & Caselli, 1999 Krauss, Dushay, Chen, & Rauscher (1995)

Rotating finger while describing a spinning motion.

Using an opening and closing motion of the hand in reference to a bird’s beak.

Movements that reflect some abstract concept in the accompanying speech. They are image based, but abstract in nature.

Metaphoric McNeill, 1992 Using a cupped hand

as a presentation of a question (McNeill, 1992).

Movements that may or may not accompany speech but provide information to a listener based upon a shared, symbolic meaning of the movement.

Emblem Symbolic

Goldin-Meadow, 2003 Rime & Schiaratura, 1991; Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1988

Placing an extended index finger in front of your puckered lips to communicate “be quiet”

Movements that reflect either the concrete or abstract content of the accompanying verbal output.

Lexical Krauss, Chen, & Gottesman,

2000; Krauss & Hadar, 1999

Include examples for both iconic and metaphoric gestures.

35