Meredith Allison, assistant professor of psychology, has published a coauthored paper in the journal Gesture.
In their paper, Allison and co-author Jennifer Gerwing compared three different methods for analyzing the relationship between words and gestures (deictic, redundancy and semantic features analyses) by using the three methods on one data set. Participants were 22 pairs of undergraduates who used words and gestures to design the layout of a student apartment. Their interactions were videotaped and analyzed.
The authors found that the semantic features analysis is best for examining the complementary and complex relationship between words and gestures. Gesture is a peer-reviewed inter-disciplinary journal that publishes research from a variety of disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, and linguistics.
The complete citation is:
Gerwing, J. & Allison, M. (2009). The relationship between verbal and gestural contributions in conversation: A comparison of three methods. Gesture, 9, 312-336.