Conference Agenda

There is an abundance of research on the purposes of gestures when communicating with other people. This research indicates that gesturing while speaking can benefit comprehension by listeners as well as aid the speaker in formulating thoughts and emotions and communicating more effectively. Surprisingly, there is very little research on people’s use and awareness of gestures when they engage in internal dialogues and self-talk. In some ways, gesturing while talking to oneself may seem contradictory, since the recipient of the message is the same person as the sender and other people are typically not the direct targets of one’s self-talk. In this research, we examined whether talking to oneself was related to people’s perceptions and production of gestures. Participants (N = 291) completed standardized measures of internal dialogues (IDAS-R), self-talk (Self-Talk Scale), and gestures (Brief Assessment of Gestures) and rated questions about their awareness of gesturing across a variety of self-talk situations. Results showed that total gesture and gesture production scores were significantly and positively related to identity, social, supportive, and spontaneous internal dialogues. Total gesture scores were also significantly and positively related to total, self-reinforcing, and self-managing self-talk scores. Internal dialogue and self-talk scores were more strongly related to gesture production than perception. Participants also reported that they tended to use gestures less frequently when having imaginary or replaying conversations with others but more frequently when they were trying to figure out what to do. We will also report on the results of an experimental study of gestures and intrapersonal communication (currently in progress). We will discuss the implications of these results for the embodiment of intrapersonal communication.