Iconic gesture use during discourse production in latent aphasia.

Background & Aims: People with latent aphasia, who have had a dominant hemisphere brain injury yet score above standardized test cut-offs for aphasia, demonstrate significant communication differences during discourse compared to cognitively healthy adults. To further characterize communication diff...

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Published in:Aphasiology Vol. 40; no. 8; pp. 1485 - 1509
Main Authors: Dresang, Haley C., Dalton, Sarah Grace, McCreary, Eleanor, Pittman, Emma, Stark, Brielle C.
Format: glossary research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd Aug2026
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        02687038
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      jtl: Aphasiology
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      dt: Aug2026
      vid: 40
      iid: 8
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      pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd
      place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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        10.1080/02687038.2025.2511215
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        atl: Iconic gesture use during discourse production in latent aphasia.
      aug:
        au:
          Dresang, Haley C.
          Dalton, Sarah Grace
          McCreary, Eleanor
          Pittman, Emma
          Stark, Brielle C.
        affil: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA
      sug:
        subj:
          Aphasia Physiopathology
          Aphasia Psychosocial Factors
          Body Language
          Task Performance and Analysis
          Speech and Language Assessment
          Funding Source
          Human
          Male
          Female
          Adult
          Middle Age
          Aged
          Aged, 80 and Over
          Audiovisuals
          Coding
          Narratives
          Neuropsychological Tests
          Language Tests
          Retrospective Design
          Record Review
          Nonexperimental Studies
          Cross Sectional Studies
          Linear Regression
          Post Hoc Analysis
          Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient
          Descriptive Statistics
          Confidence Intervals
          Data Analysis Software
          Adult: 19-44 years
          Middle Aged: 45-64 years
          Aged: 65+ years
          Aged, 80 & over
          Male
          Female
      ab: Background & Aims: People with latent aphasia, who have had a dominant hemisphere brain injury yet score above standardized test cut-offs for aphasia, demonstrate significant communication differences during discourse compared to cognitively healthy adults. To further characterize communication differences, this study is the first to compare spontaneous co-speech gesture production during spoken discourse in people with latent aphasia and cognitively healthy adults. Methods & Procedures: We leveraged AphasiaBank database videos to code iconic gestures during the Cinderella story retell and the Sandwich procedural narrative from 32 people with latent aphasia and 32 cognitively healthy adults. Gestures were coded for their relationship ("function") to speech: redundant, supplementary, or essential to understanding the spoken message. We investigated differences in gesture frequency and function both between groups and discourse types. We further characterized how these patterns related to neuropsychological information and language measures. Outcomes & Results: Individuals with latent aphasia produced more iconic gestures than cognitively healthy adults, but only in the Sandwich task. While cognitively healthy adults produced gestures of the same function (typically, redundant with speech) and frequency across tasks, individuals with latent aphasia produced more gestures in Sandwich than Cinderella discourse tasks. This task difference was correlated with aphasia severity. Within the latent aphasia group, redundant gestures were more frequent in Cinderella than in the Sandwich task. Redundant gestures correlated with number of words produced, wh ile supplementary and essential gestures were associated with speaking duration in the Sandwich task, but no gesture-language associations were found in the Cinderella task for individuals with latent aphasia. Conclusions: For the first time, we characterized co-speech gesture use in persons with latent aphasia. Our findings highlight that persons with latent aphasia, despite having subtle impairments of language, rely on iconic gesture to convey critical information more often than their peers. This is a pattern also shown in persons with clinical aphasia. Group differences in discourse production and gesture use underscore the need for multimodal communication support for individuals with latent aphasia. Gesture, often used in aphasia therapy to aid word retrieval and convey additional information, must be further investigated to understand daily communication barriers and inform targeted therapies for latent aphasia.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        glossary
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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