Over the past month, all of us in the Science 300 course have learned quite a lot about making an effective presentation. One of the most important questions we asked ourselves was whether or not to hold a script while we speak. Well, many research studies have suggested that it might be beneficial to ditch the script.
The reason behind not holding something in your hands during your speech is so that you can leave the hands free to make gestures. A research study by (Hubbard et al., 2009) suggests that there is a common neural substrate for processing speech and gesture, likely reflecting their joint communicative role in face-to-face interactions. What does that mean? To put it simply, using hand gestures when giving a presentation enhances the comprehension and perception of the spoken material by your audience.
This is also very important in the early development of speech and language as well. Before babies are able to speak multi-word phrases, they rely heavily on hand gesturing to help communicate their thoughts. Hand gesturing is observed between the babbling period at approximately 8 months to the one-word stage at approximately 12 months. At 8 months, most babies start to use proto-declarative pointing, which is pointing to draw attention to a certain object. Later on at 12 months, babies start to combine speech and hand gestures such as pointing to enhance their communication (Esteve-Gibert, and Pireto, 2014).
The researchers even found that the babies’ multi-modal coordination is much like ours when prominence is taken into account. I can’t agree with this finding more as I am often fascinated by the adult-like and sophisticated hand-gestures made by my 12 month-old nephew. For those of you who are not as well-acquainted with babies, here’s a video of two babies babbling and gesturing in an adult-like fashion. It really looks like the matters are pressing.
Speaking of pressing matters, let’s go back to the many important presentations that we will be making as science students. Many of you will still opt for the script because you are afraid of not being able to remember your speech. Don’t be afraid! We all have moments where we just can’t seem to find the right word or moments where we just can’t recall that one thing we had on our mind two seconds ago. Dr. Elena Nicoladis from the University of Alberta recommends that we start moving your hands around to help us remember. Her research done on bilingual children suggests that gesturing while you speak may improve your access to language area in the brain. In this study, bilingual children were asked to tell the same story in two different languages. Researchers first thought the children would be more inclined to use gestures to help them communicate in their weaker language. To their surprise, these children used gestures significantly more when telling the story in what they considered to be their stronger language. Based on their results, it is believed that gesturing plays an important role in accessing language in the process of speech production.
Whether in adults or infants, we know how important gesturing is in the communication process. Numerous research studies are under way to study its connection to speech and language. For example, an on-going study at Alberta Children’s Hospital is trying to observe gesture development as a way to detect language problems at an early age.
More and more evidence are being discovered to solidify the importance of gesturing. So next time you make a presentation, remember to trust yourself: practice your speech, lose the script, and make hand gestures with your now-free hands. If these chimpanzees can use hand gesture to communicate, you can definitely do it too.
Keep those hands in motion.
Cindy Liang
