One Change to How You Speak Makes What You Say 20% More Memorable, Research Shows.

In recent years, fascinating research from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and TiCC Tilburg University in the Netherlands shows that appropriate hand gestures can make your public presentation significantly more memorable. But the studies tell us that not just any gestures will do. Emphatic "beat gestures" that add emphasis to the syllables you stress will increase listeners' comprehension and retention of what you say. The researchers grouped gestures we commonly use when speaking in public into five categories: • Deictic. Literally or figuratively pointing or gesturing toward a person, idea, word, concept. • Iconic. Familiar gestures that may pantomime a common idea, like using your hands to pantomime reeling in a fish. • Metaphorical. Representing abstract concepts, like spreading your arms wide to indicate the whole world (or category, field of study, or industry). • Symbolic. Familiar gestures we have all come to understand--for example forming the "OK" sign with the thumb and forefinger. • Motor. Common, emphatic gestures that reinforce the cadence of what we say. For example, consider a speaker pounding the podium with a fist on each accented syllable of, "Listen to what I say!" The mere gesture in the air carries a similar impact. The studies cited in this article included experiments that showed a twenty-percent increase in listeners' comprehension and retention when such gestures were applied accurately. To reinforce the idea, they also tried using beat gestures mismatched to the words. In those experiments, the audience's retention dropped by 40%! Anthropologists and linguists theorize that language probably developed from manual sign language in prehistoric times. If so, the human race is sort-of hardwired to respond to hand gestures. Whether that theory is true or not, one thing remains clear: Speakers can be dramatically more effective with the proper use of beat gestures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]