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

Abstract

The present study compared gestures employment among normal speakers, speakers with fluent aphasia and speakers with non-fluent aphasia. Multimedia data of discourse samples from 23 normal speakers, 23 speakers with fluent aphasia and 21 speakers with non-fluent aphasia were extracted from Cantonese AphasiaBank. A gesture coding system which allows independent annotation of forms and functions was adopted for gestural analysis. While speakers with non-fluent aphasia were found to gesture most frequently, the rate of gesture use of speakers with fluent aphasia did not differ significantly from that of the controls. Different patterns of gesture functions in the three speaker groups revealed that gesture plays a minor role in lexical retrieval whereas its role in enhancing communication dominates among the speakers with aphasia. The percentages of complete sentences and dysfluency strongly predicted gesturing rate of speakers with aphasia. The relationship between gesture production and linguistic abilities and clinical implications for gesture-based language intervention for speakers with aphasia are discussed.