Gesture in the aging brain

Abstract

This chapter focuses on all four categories of co-speech gesture such as iconic, metaphoric, deictic, and beat. It reviews the impact of aging on general language and cognitive abilities and how they might relate to gesture use and comprehension in older adults in light of different gesture theories. The chapter addresses gesture use and comprehension in the aging brain and the effects on these processes of declines in cognitive skills such as verbal fluency, spatial and motor skills, and working memory. It focuses on gesture use and comprehension in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, semantic dementia, and Parkinson's disease to provide further evidence about the mechanisms underlying gesture's role in cognition. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of these findings given that the functions of gestures can alter on the basis of the population being studied. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)