Media release

From: The Royal Society

Word of mouth - Gestures may have helped language evolve. In this study, sighted and severely vision-impaired participants from Australia and Vanuatu attempted to communicate words to interpreters either using gestures or non-linguistic vocalisations. Communication with interpreters was twice as successful when using gestures rather than vocalisations within cultures (61.17% versus 29.04%), across cultures and for the signals produced by severely vision-impaired participants. The success of gesture can be attributed to the universal nature of gestured signals, the authors said.

Gesture is the Primary Modality for Language Creation

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

How language began is one of the oldest questions in science. Because language leaves no fossils, theories of language origin have remained speculative. We examined this question in the laboratory, by having people try to communicate without using language (similar to the game charades). Communication was twice as successful when people communicated using gesture compared to (non-linguistic) vocalisation. As predicted by philosophers and early explorers, the success of gesture can be attributed to the universal nature of gestured signals. Our findings provide evidence that supports a gesture-first theory of language origin.