Talking with Your (Artificial) Hands: Communicative Hand Gestures as an Implicit Measure of Embodiment
Roni O. Maimon-Mor,
Emeka Obasi,
Jenny Lu,
Nour Odeh,
Stephen Kirker,
Mairéad MacSweeney,
Susan Goldin-Meadow,
Tamar R. Makin
Affiliations
Roni O. Maimon-Mor
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK; WIN Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK
Emeka Obasi
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK
Jenny Lu
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Nour Odeh
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK
Stephen Kirker
Addenbrooke's Rehabilitation Clinic, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, Cambridge CB2 0DA, UK
Mairéad MacSweeney
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK; Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London, London WC1H 0PD, UK
Susan Goldin-Meadow
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Tamar R. Makin
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK; Corresponding author
Summary: When people talk, they move their hands to enhance meaning. Using accelerometry, we measured whether people spontaneously use their artificial limbs (prostheses) to gesture, and whether this behavior relates to everyday prosthesis use and perceived embodiment. Perhaps surprisingly, one- and two-handed participants did not differ in the number of gestures they produced in gesture-facilitating tasks. However, they did differ in their gesture profile. One-handers performed more, and bigger, gesture movements with their intact hand relative to their prosthesis. Importantly, one-handers who gestured more similarly to their two-handed counterparts also used their prosthesis more in everyday life. Although collectively one-handers only marginally agreed that their prosthesis feels like a body part, one-handers who reported they embody their prosthesis also showed greater prosthesis use for communication and daily function. Our findings provide the first empirical link between everyday prosthesis use habits and perceived embodiment and a novel means for implicitly indexing embodiment.
