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Research overview

Gestures, or meaningful hand movements, are typically produced concurrently with speech during normal human communication. Gestures are closely related to speech in both meaning and timing. My research has two principal goals:

  • Determine how gesture contributes to successful communication

  • Show how abnormalities in gesture contribute to ineffective communication

Gesturing during conversation
Central hypotheses

Gesture that is closely related to speech in meaning and timing facilitates communication;

gesture and speech that are not closely related fail to benefit—and may even hinder—communication.

Approach

To test my central hypothesis,

I examine normal and disordered communication.

I study children and adults; native and non-native speakers.

I use behavioral and brain imaging methods.

Outcomes

My research will identify biomarkers of abnormal gesture-speech processing that can be used to evaluate communicative symptom severity, as well as the efficacy of treatments addressing communicative symptoms.

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