Iconic gestures during speaking and their relationship with aging and cognition

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Abstract

Iconic gestures—movements that visually represent spoken content—support language and cognition, particularly under verbal demands. This study examined whether gesture production during procedural discourse varies with age and cognitive performance. Thirty-one adults (ages 30–80) described how to make a sandwich, do laundry, and plant a garden in a virtual testing environment. Iconic gestures were manually coded and normalized per 100 words of speech. Cognitive function was assessed using Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) subtests, Digit Span and Arithmetic from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV (WAIS-IV), and age-adjusted Working Memory Index (WMI) scores. Stepwise regression revealed that higher MoCA Delayed Recall scores predicted greater gesture use, while older age was associated with fewer gestures. A marginal age × delayed recall interaction suggested that older adults with poorer recall produced more gestures, consistent with a compensatory role for gesture. However, exploratory analysis of WMI classifications indicated that participants with Below Average working memory produced fewer gestures than those with Average or High Average scores. Whilst this was not a significant finding, this suggests that gesture production depends on sufficient working memory to coordinate speech and movement in real time. These findings support the Gesture as Simulated Action framework, which links gesture to sensorimotor simulations that facilitate communication. Results underscore the complex interplay between aging, memory, and gesture, suggesting that gestures may both reflect cognitive capacity and serve as sensitive behavioral markers of cognitive change.

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