Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40261301›Full record

ArticlePsychological science2025

Co-Speech Hand Gestures Are Used to Predict Upcoming Meaning.

Marlijn Ter Bekke, Linda Drijvers, Judith Holler

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Psychological science, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Multimodal integration supports neural processing of grammatical negation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Marlijn Ter BekkeDonders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University.ORCID 0000-0002-4029-4993
Linda DrijversDonders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University.ORCID 0000-0001-9154-7033
Judith HollerDonders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University.

Funding

Non-US Government Research Support type
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

In face-to-face conversation, people use speech and gesture to convey meaning. Seeing gestures alongside speech facilitates comprehenders' language processing, but crucially, the mechanisms underlying this facilitation remain unclear. We investigated whether comprehenders use the semantic information in gestures, typically preceding related speech, to predict upcoming meaning. Dutch adults listened to questions asked by a virtual avatar. Questions were accompanied by an iconic gesture (e.g., typing) or meaningless control movement (e.g., arm scratch) followed by a short pause and target word (e.g., "type"). A Cloze experiment showed that gestures improved explicit predictions of upcoming target words. Moreover, an EEG experiment showed that gestures reduced alpha and beta power during the pause, indicating anticipation, and reduced N400 amplitudes, demonstrating facilitated semantic processing. Thus, comprehenders use iconic gestures to predict upcoming meaning. Theories of linguistic prediction should incorporate communicative bodily signals as predictive cues to capture how language is processed in face-to-face interaction.

Indexed as

ComprehensionGesturesSpeechSpeech PerceptionAdultElectroencephalographyEvoked PotentialsFemaleHandHumansMaleSemanticsYoung Adultco-speech gestureEEGlanguagemultimodal communicationprediction

Identifiers

PMID40261301
PMCPMC13043028

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.