What was the aim of the study by the authors?
The key authors of the article were D Frick-Horbury and RE Guttentag. They conducted a study about hand gesture production and the impacts of limiting gestures on free recall and verbal recovery. The participants were given definitions and tried to recover each target word.
State the authors’ hypothesis
They hypothesized that gestures mainly aid in facilitating verbal retrieval through given cross-modality priming through the activation of the semantic feature of the identified lexical items (Frick-Horbury & Guttentag, 1998). The hypothesis was theoretically applied along the way; an individual could try to communicate without any motor movements.
Participants
The research participants were 25 women and 11 men undergraduates, which made up a total of 36 individuals. They participated in the experiment to enhance the fulfillment of the course requirements.
Experiment setting
Hand movement restriction, SAT verbal scores and unrestricted hand movements were the independent variables. The dependent variable was lexical items that they retrieved accurately across the experiment and the number of words recalled by the participants. The whole setting was completed using the 2×2 group designs that were independent (Frick-Horbury & Guttentag, 1998). The entire experiment determined the impacts of limiting hand gestures on verbal recovery as a purpose for higher or lower verbal skills.
Findings from the experiment
Limitations or restrictions of hand movement yielded low verbal skills. The unrestricted participants were more fluent and produced more words effectively as compared to those restricted.
Discussion
Based on the findings, it was clear that gestures helped the participants effectively present their ideas, especially on elaborating the intended word. Gestures also allow the listeners to remember the concept delivered by the speaker as they can recall their gestures easily (Frick-Horbury & Guttentag, 1998). The findings implied that restriction of hand movement should not be seen as a significant effect of verbal recovery. At times, gestures in verbal communication may not be needed at some stages and can only be used where it makes a concept presented.
Reference
Frick-Horbury, D., & Guttentag, R. E. (1998). The effects of restricting hand gesture production on lexical retrieval and free recall. The American Journal of Psychology, 111(1), 43. Web.