ABSTRACT
People gesture when they speak. Despite considerable attention from a variety of disciplines, the precise nature of the relation between gesture, speech and thought has remained elusive. The research reported here considers two very different hypotheses about the fundamental relationship. By one account, gesture is a consequence of physiological arousal. By another account, gesture use reflects more cognitive processes and is strongly linked to mental representation. This paper seeks the mechanism underlying the link between gesture and speech by showing that both mental representation and physiological arousal are reflected in our gesture use.
