Table 5.
Distributions of forms and functions of gestures of different groups of speakers.
| Distribution | Forms (%) |
Overall percentage of function |
|||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content-carrying gestures |
Non-content-carrying gestures |
||||||||||||||||||||
| Iconic |
Metaphoric |
Deictic |
Emblem |
Beat |
Non |
||||||||||||||||
| C | F | NF | C | F | NF | C | F | NF | C | F | NF | C | F | NF | C | F | NF | C | F | NF | |
| Percentage of forms | 9.7 | 9.0 | 4.6 | 4.2 | 4.5 | 4.8 | 27.5 | 15.9 | 29.4 | 1.3 | 2.3 | 2.7 | 4.2 | 6.4 | 4.4 | 53.0 | 62.0 | 53.7 | |||
| Functions (%) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Provide a | 0.0 | 25.0 | 29.5 | 10.0 | 11.1 | 6.5 | 3.1 | 17.3 | 14.3 | 0.0 | 5.6 | 7.7 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.2 | 0.0 | 1.7 | 5.8 | 6.1 |
| Enhance b | 91.3 | 73.6 | 63.6 | 50.0 | 88.9 | 93.5 | 93.8 | 55.1 | 40.0 | 66.7 | 88.9 | 80.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 37.3 | 21.4 | 21.6 |
| Alternate c | 0.0 | 0.0 | 6.8 | 10.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.1 | 33.3 | 5.6 | 3.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.8 | 0.1 | 0.7 |
| Guide d | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 40.0 | 23.5 | 9.5 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 2.1 | 1.5 | 0.5 |
| Reinforce e | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 60.0 | 72.5 | 90.5 | 0.0 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 2.1 | 4.9 | 4.3 |
| Lexical f | 8.7 | 1.4 | 0.0 | 10.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.5 | 15.0 | 7.9 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 3.9 | 0.0 | 0.8 | 16.6 | 22.7 | 2.1 | 13.0 | 14.7 |
| Sentence g | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.4 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.6 | 1.2 | 0.0 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 0.1 |
| Nonspecific h | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 20.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.5 | 12.6 | 36.4 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 7.7 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 97.6 | 81.6 | 76.1 | 53.0 | 52.6 | 51.9 |
Note. Total number of gestures of the nonfluent aphasic group (n = 21): 951. Total number of gestures of the fluent aphasic group (n = 23): 799. Total number of gestures of the control group (n = 23): 236. C = control speakers; F = speakers with fluent aphasia; NF = speakers with nonfluent aphasia.
a
Providing additional information to message conveyed.
b
Enhancing the speech content.
c
Providing alternative means of communication.
d
Guiding and controlling the flow of speech.
e
Reinforcing the intonation or prosody of speech.
f
Assisting lexical retrieval.
g
Assisting sentence reconstruction.
h
Other nonspecific or noncommunicative functions.