Body movement and speech rhythm in social conversation

Abstract

The relationship between body movement and speech rhythm was newly formulated following D. S. Boomer's work on hesitations in speech: movements were predicted to occur early in phonemic clauses and at points following nonfluencies with clauses. A preliminary study of old data for which the movements were located by watching motion pictures bore out the prediction, and led to a more intensive study using more representative speech samples, and artifacts. Results were highly significant, but the amount of movement variance accounted for was small. Data collected by this method allowed direct test of statements by R. E. Pittenger, C. F. Hockett, and J. J. Danehy, and by A. E. Scheflen, whose claims of very close speech-movement relationships were found to be exaggerated. The linkage found between hesitations and movements was interpreted in terms of speech encoding process. (22 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.