Presentations

Abstract

Human communication requires interlocutors to mutually understand each other. Previous research has suggested inter-brain synchrony as an important feature of social interaction, since it has been observed during joint attention, speech interactions and cooperative tasks. Nonetheless, it is still unknown whether inter-brain synchrony is actually related to successful face-to-face communication. Here, we use dual-EEG to study if inter-brain synchrony is modulated during episodes of successful and unsuccessful communication in clear and noisy communication settings. Dyads performed a tangram-based referential communication task with and without background noise, while both their EEG and audiovisual behavior was recorded. Other-initiated repairs were annotated in the audiovisual data and were used as indexes of unsuccessful and successful communication. More specifically, we compared inter-brain synchrony during episodes of miscommunication (repair initiations) and episodes of mutual understanding (repair solutions and acceptance phases) in the clear and the noise condition. We expect that when communication is successful, inter-brain synchrony will be stronger than when communication is unsuccessful, and we expect that these patterns will be most pronounced in the noise condition. Results are currently being analyzed and will be presented and discussed with respect to the inter-brain neural signatures underlying the process of mutual understanding in face-to-face conversation.

Abstract

The primordial site of conversation is face-to-face social interaction where participants make use of visual modalities, as well as talk, in the coordination of collaborative action (Clark, 1996). This observation leads to a fundamental question: what is the place of multimodal resources such as these in the organisation of turn-taking for conversation’o To answer this question, we collected a corpus of both dyadic and triadic face-to-face interactions between adult native English speakers, with the aim to build on existing observations of the use of visual bodily modalities in conversation (e.g., Duncan, 1972; Goodwin, 1981; Kendon, 1967; Lerner 2003; Mondada 2007; Oloff, 2013; Rossano, 2012; Sacks & Schegloff, 2002; Schegloff, 1998). The corpus retains much of the spontaneity and naturalness of everyday talk while combining it with state-of-the-art technology to allow for exact, detailed analyses of verbal and visual conversational behaviours. Each participant (1) was filmed by three high definition video cameras (providing a frontal plus two lateral views) allowing for fine-grained, frame-by-frame analyses of bodily conduct, as well as the precise measurement of how individual bodily behaviours are timed with respect to each other, and with respect to speech; (2) wore a head-mounted microphone providing high quality recordings of the audio signal suitable for determining on- and off-sets of speaking turns, as well as inter-turn gaps, with high precision, (3) wore head-mounted eye-tracking glasses to monitor eye movements and fixations overlaid onto a video recording of the visual scene the participant was viewing at any given moment (including the other [two] participant[s] and the surroundings in which the conversation took place). The HD video recordings of body behaviour, the eye-tracking video recordings, and the audio recordings from all 2/3 participants engaged in each conversation were then integrated within a single software application (ELAN) for synchronised playback and analysis. All data have been transcribed, coded for co-speech gestures and gaze fixations on a frame-by-frame basis. The large amount of data obtained from this corpus is currently being analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The project aims to shed light on the cognitive puzzle that turn-taking presents us with (Levinson, 2013); interlocutors are confronted with the challenge of comprehending an on-going turn while, at the same time, planning a response and estimating when the current speaker’s talk will end in order to time their contribution as precisely as possible (the average gap between turns is a mere 200ms). The results from this project provide insight into the process of turn projection as evidenced by participants’ gaze behaviour with a focus on the role different bodily cues play in this context. Our findings so far show that co-speech gestures may play an important role in this process by guiding the projection of upcoming turn boundaries and next actions. In all, this project elucidates the role of multi-modality in the organisation of turns at talk and in the cognitive processes that underlie this organisation

Abstract

The primordial site of conversation is face-to-face social interaction where participants make use of visual modalities, as well as talk, in the coordination of collaborative action. This most basic observation leads to a fundamental question: what is the place of multimodal resources such as these in the organisation of turn-taking for conversation? To answer this question, we collected a corpus of both dyadic and triadic face-to-face interactions between adults, with the aim to build on existing observations of the use of visual bodily modalities in conversation (e.g., Duncan, 1972; Goodwin, 1981; Kendon, 1967; Lerner 2003; Mondada 2007; Oloff, 2013; Rossano, 2012; Sacks & Schegloff, 2002; Schegloff, 1998). The corpus retains the spontaneity and naturalness of everyday talk as much as possible while combining it with state-of-the-art technology to allow for exact, detailed analyses of verbal and visual conversational behaviours. Each participant (1) was filmed by three high definition video cameras (providing a frontal plus two lateral views) allowing for fine-grained, frame-by-frame analyses of bodily conduct, as well as the precise measurement of how individual bodily behaviours are timed with respect to each other, and with respect to speech; (2) wore a head-mounted microphone providing high quality recordings of the audio signal suitable for determining on- and off-sets of speaking turns, as well as inter-turn gaps, with high precision, (3) wore head-mounted eye-tracking glasses to monitor eye movements and fixations overlaid onto a video recording of the visual scene the participant was viewing at any given moment (including the other [two] participant[s] and the surroundings in which the conversation took place). The HD video recordings of body behaviour, the eye-tracking video recordings, and the audio recordings from all 2/3 participants engaged in each conversation were then integrated within a single software application (ELAN) for synchronised playback and analysis. The analyses focus on the use and interplay of visual bodily resources, including eye gaze, co-speech gestures, and body posture, during conversational coordination, as well as on how these signals interweave with participants’ turns at talk. The results provide insight into the process of turn projection as evidenced by participants’ gaze behaviour with a focus on the role different bodily cues play in this context, and into how concurrent visual and verbal resources are involved in turn construction and turn allocation. This project will add to our understanding of core issues in the field of CA, such as by elucidating the role of multi-modality and number of participants engaged in talk-in-interaction (Schegloff, 2009). References Duncan, S. (1972). Some signals and rules for taking speaking turns in conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 23, 283-92. Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press. Kendon, A. (1967). Some functions of gaze-direction in social interaction. Acta Psychologia, 26, 22-63. Lerner, G. H. (2003). Selecting next speaker: The context-sensitive operation of a context-free organization. Language in Society, 32(02), 177–201. Mondada, L. (2007). Multimodal resources for turn-taking: Pointing and the emergence of possible next speakers. Discourse Studies, 9, 195-226. Oloff, F. (2013). Embodied withdrawal after overlap resolution. Journal of Pragmatics, 46, 139-156. Rossano, F. (2012). Gaze behavior in face-to-face interaction. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. (2002). Home position. Gesture, 2, 133-146. Schegloff, E. (1998). Body torque. Social Research, 65, 535-596. Schegloff, E. (2009). One perspective on Conversation Analysis: Comparative perspectives. In J. Sidnell (ed.), Conversation Analysis: Comparative perspectives, pp. 357-406. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive, neurological dis- order caused by the loss of dopaminergic cells in the basal ganglia, which is involved in motor control. This leads to the cardinal motor symptoms of PD: tremor, bradykinesia (slow- ness of movement), rigidity and postural instability. PD also leads to general cognitive impairment (executive function, memory, visuospatial abilities), and language impairments; PD patients perform worse at language tasks such as provid- ing word definitions and naming objects, generating lists of verbs, and naming actions. Thus, there seems to be a par- ticular impairment for action-language. Despite the fact that action and language are both impaired in PD, little research has explored if and how co-speech gestures, which embody a link between these two domains, are affected. The Ges- ture as Simulated Action hypothesis argues that gestures arise from cognitive representations or simulations of actions. It has been argued that people with PD may be less able to cog- nitively represent, simulate and imagine actions, which could account for their action-language impairment and may also mean that gestures are affected. Recently, it has been shown that while there is not a straightforward reduction in gesture use in PD, patients’ gestures which described actions are less precise/informative than those of controls. However, partici- pants only described two actions, and to a knowing addressee (so the task was not communicative). The present study extended this by asking participants to describe a wide range of actions in an apparently commu- nicative task, and compared viewpoint as well as precision between the two groups. Gesture viewpoint was examined in order to provide a window into the cognitive representa- tions underlying gesture, by demonstrating whether or not the speaker has placed themselves as the agent within the ac- tion (character viewpoint), requiring a cognitive simulation of the action. Overall, studying gestures in PD has clinical relevance, and will provide insight into the cognitive basis of gestures in healthy people. 25 PD patients and 25 age-matched controls viewed 10 pictures and 10 videos depicting a range of actions and de- scribed them to help an addressee identify the correct stimu- lus. No difference in the rate of gesture production between the two groups was found. However, the precision of ges- tures describing actions was found to be significantly lower in the PD group. Furthermore, the proportion of gestures produced from character viewpoint was found to differ be- tween the groups, with PD patients producing significantly less C-VPT gestures. This suggests that the cognitive repre- sentations underlying the gestures have changed in PD, and that people with PD are less able to imagine themselves as the agent of the action. This supports the GSA hypothesis by demonstrating that gesture production changes when the abil- ity to perform and to cognitively simulate actions is impaired. Our next study will assess the relationships between cognitive factors affected in PD and gesture, and motor imagery ability and gesture. The study will also examine gestures produced by people with PD when describing a wide range of semantic content in various communicative situations.

Abstract

Background: Gesture and speech are theorized to form a sin- gle integrated system of meaning during language produc- tion (McNeill, 1992), and evidence is mounting that this in- tegration applies to language comprehension as well (Kelly, Ozyurek & Maris, 2010). However, it is unknown whether gesture is uniquely integrated with speech or is processed like any other manual action. To explore this issue, we compared the extent to which speech is integrated with hand gestures versus actual actions on objects during comprehension. Method: The present study employed a priming paradigm in two experiments. In Experiment 1, subjects watched multi- modal videos that presented auditory (words) and visual (ges- tures and actions on objects) information. Half the subjects related the audio information to a written prime presented be- fore the video, and the other half related the visual informa- tion to the written prime. For half of the multimodal video stimuli, the audio and visual information was congruent, and for the other half, incongruent. The task was to press one but- ton if the written prime was the same as the visual (31 sub- jects) or audio (31 subjects) information in the target video or another button if different. RT and accuracy were recorded. Results: In Experiment 2, we reversed the priming se- quence with a different set of 18 subjects. Now the video became the prime and the written verb followed as the target, but the task was the same with one differenceXto indicate whether the written target was related or unrelated to only the audio information (speech) in preceding video prime. ERPs were recorded to the written targets. In Experiment 1, subjects in both the audio and visual tar- get tasks were less accurate when processing stimuli in which gestures and actions were incongruent versus congruent with speech, F(1, 60) = 22.90, p < .001, but this effect was less prominent for speech-action than for speech-gesture stimuli. However, subjects were more accurate when identifying ac- tions versus gestures, F(1, 60) = 8.03, p = .006. In Experiment 2, there were two early ERP effects. When primed with gesture, incongruent primes produced a larger P1, t (17) = 3.75, p = 0.002, and P2, t (17) = 3.02, p = 0.008, to the target words than the congruent condition in the grand-averaged ERPs (reflecting early perceptual and atten- tional processes). However, there were no significant differ- ences between congruent and incongruent conditions when primed with action. Discussion: The incongruency effect replicates and ex- tends previous work by Kelly et al. (2010) by showing not only a bi-directional influence of gesture and speech, but also of action and speech. In addition, the results show that while actions are easier to process than gestures (Exp. 1), gestures may be more tightly tied to the processing of accompanying speech (Exps. 1 & 2). These results suggest that even though gestures are perceptually less informative than actions, they may be treated as communicatively more informative in rela- tion to the accompanying speech. In this way, the two types of visual information might have different status in language comprehension.

Abstract

Background: Gesture and speech are theorized to form a single integrated system of meaning during language production (McNeill, 1992), and evidence is mounting that this integration applies to language comprehension as well (Kelly, Ozyurek & Maris, 2010). However, it is unknown whether gesture is uniquely integrated with speech or is processed like any other manual action. To explore this issue, we compared the extent to which speech is integrated with hand gestures versus actual actions on objects during comprehension. Method: The present study employed a priming paradigm in two experiments. In Experiment 1, subjects watched multimodal videos that presented auditory (words) and visual (gestures and actions on objects) information. Half the subjects related the audio information to a written prime presented before the video, and the other half related the visual information to the written prime. For half of the multimodal video stimuli, the audio and visual information was congruent, and for the other half, incongruent. The task was to press one button if the written prime was the same as the visual (31 subjects) or audio (31 subjects) information in the target video or another button if different. RT and accuracy were recorded. Results: In Experiment 2, we reversed the priming sequence with a different set of 18 subjects. Now the video became the prime and the written verb followed as the target, but the task was the same with one differenceXto indicate whether the written target was related or unrelated to only the audio information (speech) in preceding video prime. ERPs were recorded to the written targets. In Experiment 1, subjects in both the audio and visual target tasks were less accurate when processing stimuli in which gestures and actions were incongruent versus congruent with speech, F(1, 60) = 22.90, p<.001, but this effect was less prominent for speech-action than for speech-gesture stimuli. However, subjects were more accurate when identifying actions versus gestures, F(1, 60) = 8.03, p = .006. In Experiment 2, there were two early ERP effects. When primed with gesture, incongruent primes produced a larger P1, t (17) = 3.75, p = 0.002, and P2, t (17) = 3.02, p = 0.008, to the target words than the congruent condition in the grand-averaged ERPs (reflecting early perceptual and attentional processes). However, there were no significant differences between congruent and incongruent conditions when primed with action. Discussion: The incongruency effect replicates and extends previous work by Kelly et al. (2010) by showing not only a bi-directional influence of gesture and speech, but also of action and speech. In addition, the results show that while actions are easier to process than gestures (Exp. 1), gestures may be more tightly tied to the processing of accompanying speech (Exps. 1 & 2). These results suggest that even though gestures are perceptually less informative than actions, they may be treated as communicatively more informative in relation to the accompanying speech. In this way, the two types of visual information might have different status in language comprehension

Abstract

Pain is a frequent feature of medical consultations and must be communicated effectively if health care providers are to understand the experience and provide treatment. However, pain is difficult to verbalise and spoken pain descriptions are subject to misinterpretation (Schott, 2004). It is well known that when we speak we also produce co-speech hand ges- tures, and during pain communication these gestures have been found to depict aspects of pain that are not contained in the accompanying speech, such as location, sensation and cause of pain (Rowbotham et al., 2012, 2013a, 2013b). Al- though recipients are known to be able to comprehend the information contained in gestures produced during descrip- tions of concrete entities and events (see Hostetter, 2011 for a review), it is not yet known whether this is the case for sub- jective experiences such as pain. We investigated whether un- trained observers are able to glean any additional information from the gestures that accompany spoken pain descriptions, and whether this can be enhanced through a short instruction session on co-speech gestures. Participants (n = 30 per condi- tion) viewed 20 short video clips (mean length = 7.5 seconds) of pain descriptions under one of three presentation condi- tions: 1) Speech Only, 2) Speech and Gesture, or 3) Speech and Gesture plus Instruction (a short presentation, prior to the video clips, explaining what co-speech gestures are and the types of pain information they can depict). Following each clip, participants provided a free-text description of the pain and a “traceable additions” analysis (Kelly et al., 2002) was used to assess whether participants’ descriptions contained any information that was uniquely contained in gestures in the original clips. Participants who had received instruction in co-speech gestures (Speech and Gesture plus Instruction con- dition) obtained the most information from gestures, while those who did not have access to gestures (Speech Only con- dition) obtained the least. There were no differences in the amount of information obtained from speech across the con- ditions, suggesting that neither having access to gestures nor being instructed to attend to these has any detrimental effect on pain understanding. These results suggest that attending to the speaker’s gestures during pain communication can en- hance the recipients understanding of this subjective experi- ence. These findings have important implications for com- munication in medical settings, suggesting that health care professionals may benefit from training in co-speech gestures in order to improve their understanding of patients’ pain ex- periences

Abstract

Previous work suggests that the communicative behavior
of older adults differs systematically from that of younger
adults. For instance, older adults produce significantly fewer
representational gestures than younger adults in monologue
description tasks (Cohen & Borsoi, 1996; Feyereisen &
Havard, 1999). In addition, older adults seem to have more
difficulty than younger adults in establishing common ground
(i.e. knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs mutually shared
between a speaker and an addressee, Clark, 1996) in speech
in a referential communication paradigm (Horton & Spieler,
2007). Here we investigated whether older adults take such
common ground into account when designing multi-modal
utterances for an addressee. The present experiment com-
pared the speech and co-speech gesture production of two age
groups (young: 20-30 years, old: 65-75 years) in an inter-
active setting, manipulating the amount of common ground
between participants.
Thirty-two pairs of nave participants (16 young, 16 old,
same-age-pairs only) took part in the experiment. One of the
participants (the speaker) narrated short cartoon stories to the
other participant (the addressee) (task 1) and gave instruc-
tions on how to assemble a 3D model from wooden building
blocks (task 2). In both tasks, we varied the amount of infor-
mation mutually shared between the two participants (com-
mon ground manipulation). Additionally, we also obtained a
range of cognitive measures from the speaker: verbal work-
ing memory (operation span task), visual working memory
(visual patterns test and Corsi block test), processing speed
and executive functioning (trail making test parts A + B) and
a semantic fluency measure (animal naming task). Prelimi-
nary data analysis of about half the final sample suggests that
overall, speakers use fewer words per narration/instruction
when there is shared knowledge with the addressee, in line
with previous findings (e.g. Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986).
This effect is larger for young than for old adults, potentially
indicating that older adults have more difficulties taking com-
mon ground into account when formulating utterances. Fur-
ther, representational co-speech gestures were produced at the
same rate by both age groups regardless of common ground
condition in the narration task (in line with Campisi & zyrek,
2013). In the building block task, however, the trend for the
young adults is to gesture at a higher rate in the common
ground condition, suggesting that they rely more on the vi-
sual modality here (cf. Holler & Wilkin, 2009). The same
trend could not be found for the old adults. Within the next
three months, we will extend our analysis a) by taking a wider
range of gesture types (interactive gestures, beats) into ac-
count and b) by looking at qualitative features of speech (in-
formation content) and co-speech gestures (size, shape, tim-
ing). Finally, we will correlate the resulting data with the data
from the cognitive tests.
This study will contribute to a better understanding of the
communicative strategies of a growing aging population as
well as to the body of research on co-speech gesture use in
addressee design. It also addresses the relationship between
cognitive abilities on the one hand and co-speech gesture
production on the other hand, potentially informing existing
models of co-speech gesture production.

Abstract

Common ground (CG), i.e. the knowledge, beliefs and assumptions that interlocutors mutually share in interaction, is fundamental t o successful communication (Clark, 1996). An increasing number of studies have shown that speakers use co - speech gestures at the same rate (or even higher) when they share CG as opposed to when they do not (e.g. Campisi & Ozyurek, 2013; Holler & Wilkin, 20 09; Holler, Tutton & Wilkin, 2011). There are two alternative explanations for this finding. On the one hand, it has been argued that mentally representing our addressee’s knowledge can require considerable cognitive effort (Pickering & Garrod, 2004). Henc e, gesture rate may be high in CG contexts because the cognitive effort involved in mentally representing CG is considerable. In contrast, this high gesture rate may be due to the fact that gestures play an important communicative role, even when conveying information that is already mutually shared (Holler & Wilkin, 2009). The present study tested these two hypotheses by combining the manipulation of CG with a manipulation of communicative context. We used a 2(CG) x 3(communication context) between - partici pants design (18 participants per condition, N=108). All participants watched a short film and narrated it to their addressee. Addressees had either seen parts of the film together with the speaker (CG) or not (no - CG). In addition, we manipulated communica tive context by asking speakers to narrate their story either face - to - face, via an occluding screen, or into a tape - recorder, a manipulation that has been shown to affect gesture rate in no - CG contexts (Bavelas et al., 2008). Our results revealed a signifi cant main effect of communicative context, with gesture rate being highest in the face - to - face condition, followed by the screen condition, and lowest in the tape - recorder condition. Importantly, we did not find a main effect of common ground on gesture ra te, and no interaction between our two factors. This finding supports the hypothesis that gestures representing CG information are communicatively intended as opposed to being triggered by an increased cognitive load.

Abstract

Common ground (CG), i.e., the knowledge, beliefs and assumptions interlocutors mutually share in interaction, is fundamental to successful communication (Clark, 1996). Next to studies finding gestural ellipsis in the context of CG, an increasing number of studies has shown that speakers use co-speech gestures at the same rate (or even a higher one) when they do compared to when they do not share CG with their interlocutor (e.g. Campisi & Ozyurek, 2013; Holler & Wilkin, 2009; Holler, Tutton & Wilkin, 2011). Common ground (CG), i.e. the knowledge, beliefs and assumptions that interlocutors mutually share in interaction, is fundamental to successful communication (Clark, 1996). In contrast to studies that have found gestural ellipsis when a speaker shares CG with an interlocutor, an increasing number of studies have shown that speakers use co-speech gestures at the same rate (or even higher) when they share CG as opposed to when they do not (e.g. Campisi & Ozyurek, 2013; Holler & Wilkin, 2009; Holler, Tutton & Wilkin, 2011). There are two alternative explanations for this finding. On the one hand, it has been argued that mentally representing our addressee’s knowledge can require considerable cognitive effort (Pickering & Garrod, 2004). In combination with evidence that gesturing helps to reduce cognitive load in cognitively effortful tasks (e.g., Goldin-Meadow, 1999), one hypothesis is that gesture rate is high in CG contexts because cognitive effort involved in mentally representing CG is high. This contrasts markedly with the hypothesis that gesture rate remains high when CG exists because the gestures play an important communicative role even when they are conveying information that is mutually shared (Holler & Wilkin, 2009). There are two alternative explanations for this finding. On the one hand, it has been argued that mentally representing our addressee’s knowledge can require considerable cognitive effort (Pickering & Garrod, 2004). In combination with evidence that gesturing helps to reduce cognitive load in cognitively effortful tasks (e.g. Goldin-Meadow, 1999), one hypothesis is that gesture rate is high in CG contexts because the cognitive effort involved in mentally representing CG is high. This contrasts markedly with the hypothesis that gesture rate remains high when CG exists because gestures play an important communicative role, even when conveying information that is already mutually shared (Holler & Wilkin, 2009). The present study tested these two hypotheses by combining the manipulation of CG with a manipulation of communicative context. We used a 2(CG) x 3(communication context) between-participants design (18 participants per condition, N=108). All participants watched a short film and narrated it to their addressee. Addressees had either seen parts of the film together with the speaker (CG) or not (no- CG). In addition, we manipulated communication context by asking speakers to narrate their story either face-to-face, via an occluding screen, or into a tape-recorder, a manipulation that has been shown to affect gesture rate in no-CG contexts (Bavelas et al., 2008). If gestures produced in CG contexts are triggered by the cognitive effort of having to mentally represent CG, then social manipulations of this kind should not influence gesture rate in. If gestures conveying information already in CG are communicatively intended, however, then we would expect gesture rate to be different in the three conditions. Our results revealed a significant main effect of social context, with gesture rate being highest in the face-toface condition, followed by the screen condition, and lowest in the tape-recorder condition. Importantly, we did not find a main effect of common ground on gesture rate, and no interaction between our two factors.The present study tested these two hypotheses by combining the manipulation of CG with a manipulation of communicative context. We used a 2(CG) x 3 (communication context) between-participants design (18 participants per condition, N=108). All participants watched a short film and narrated it to their addressee. Addressees had either seen parts of the film together with the speaker (CG) or not (no-CG). In addition, we manipulated communicative context by asking speakers to narrate their story either faceto- face, via an occluding screen, or into a tape-recorder, a manipulation that has been shown to affect gesture rate in no- CG contexts (Bavelas et al., 2008). If gestures produced in CG contexts are triggered by the cognitive effort of having to mentally represent CG, then social manipulations of this kind should not influence gesture rate. However, if gestures conveying information already in CG are communicatively intended, then we would expect gesture rate to be different in the three conditions. Our results provide several insights. Firstly, they add to the growing body of evidence for maintained/high gesture rate in some common ground contexts. Secondly, they replicate effects of visual access and dialogue on gesture rate found in earlier studies manipulating social interaction. Thirdly, and most importantly, this social interaction effect affected gesture rates in both the common ground and no-common ground conditions equally. This finding is compatible with the account that gestures representing CG information are communicatively intended but not with a cognitive effort-based explanation. Our results revealed a significant main effect of communicative context, with gesture rate being highest in the face-to-face condition, followed by the screen condition, and lowest in the tape-recorder condition. Importantly, we did not find a main effect of common ground on gesture rate, and no interaction between our two factors

Abstract

Several researchers have shown a close relationship between gesture and language in typically developing children and in children with developmental disorders involving delayed or impaired linguistic abilities. Most of these studies reported that, when children are limited in cognitive, linguistic, met- alinguistic, and articulatory skills, they may compensate for some of these limitations with gestures (Capone & McGre- gor, 2004). Some researchers also highlighted that children with Down Syndrome (DS) show a preference for nonver- bal communication using more gestures with respect to typi- cally developing (TD) children (Stefanini, Caselli & Volterra, 2011). The present study investigates the lexical comprehen- sion and production abilities as well as the frequency and the form of gestural production in children with DS. In partic- ular, we are interested in the frequency of gesture produc- tion (deictic and representational) and the types of represen- tational gesture produced. Four gesture types were coded, including own body, size and shape, body-part-as object and imagined-object. Fourteen children with DS (34 months of developmental age, 54 months of chronological age) and a comparison group of 14 typically developing children (TD) (29 months of chronological age) matched for gender and de- velopmental age were assessed through the parent question- naire MB-CDI and a direct test of lexical comprehension and production (PiNG). Children with DS show a general weak- ness in lexical comprehension and production. As for the composition of the lexical repertoire, for both groups of chil- dren, nouns are understood and produced in higher percent- ages compared to predicates. Children with DS produce more representational gestures than TD children in the comprehen- sion task and above all with predicates; on the contrary, both groups of children exhibit the same number of gestures on the MB-CDI and in the lexical production task. Children with DS produced more unimodal gestural answers than the con- trol group. Children from both groups produced all four ges- ture types (own body 53%, size and shape 9%, body-part-as object 25 %, and imagined-object 14%). Chi-square analy- sis revealed no significant difference in the type of gesture produced between the two groups of children for both lex- ical categories. For both groups the distribution of gesture types reflects an item effect (eg. 100% of gesture produced for the pictures lion, kissing and washing were own body and 100% of the pictures produce for small and long were size and shape). For some item (e.g. comb, talking on the phone) chil- dren in both groups produced both types (body-part-as object and imagined-object) with similar frequency. These data on the types of representational gestures produced by the two groups show a similar conceptual representation in TD chil- dren and in children with DS despite a greater impairment of the spoken linguistic abilities in the letter. Future investiga- tions, are needed to confirm these preliminary results.