Acoustic specification of upper limb movement in voicing

Hand gestures communicate through the visual information created by movement. Recently,we found that there are also direct biomechanical effects of high-impetus upper limb movementon voice acoustics. Here we explored whether listeners could detect information aboutmovement in the voicing of another person. In this exploratory study, participants listened to arecorded vocalizer who was simultaneously producing low-(wrist movement) or high-(armmovement) impetus movements at three different tempos. Listeners were asked to synchronizetheir own movement (wrist or arm movement) with the vocalizer. Listeners coupled with thefrequency of the vocalizer arm (but not wrist) movements, and showed phase-coupling withvocalizer arm (but not wrist) movements. However, we found that this synchronizationoccurred regardless of whether the listener was moving their wrist or arm. This study showsthat, in principle, there is acoustic specification of arm movements in voicing, but not wristmovements. These results, if replicated, provide novel insight into the possible interpersonalfunctions of gesture acoustics, which may lie in communicating bodily states.Wim Pouw, Alexandra Paxton, Steven J. Harrison, and James A. Dixo