Hand movements are often treated as a nervous tic to be suppressed, but a growing body of research suggests they are one of the most powerful tools a speaker has. Across lab experiments, large-scale ...

Novack, who has studied infants as young as 18 months, has seen how the capacity to derive meaning from movement increases with age. Adults do it so naturally, it’s easy to forget that mapping meaning ...

Chimpanzees and bonobos can communicate with greater flexibility using hand gestures than they can with facial expressions or vocalizations, new research shows. Their use of hand motions to convey ...

How do you signal to a waiter, across a crowded restaurant, you want the check or bill? How do you signal that the person you’re addressing should phone you? How do tell another motorist, at the ...

One of the main problems travelers face is communicating with the locals. Even if you never leave home without your trusty phrase book, communication is as much about nonverbal cues as it is about ...

Remember the last time someone flipped you the bird? Whether or not that single finger was accompanied by spoken obscenities, you knew exactly what it meant. The conversion from movement into meaning ...

How do you signal to a waiter, across a crowded restaurant, you want the check or bill? How do you signal that the person you’re addressing should phone you? How do tell another motorist, at the ...