Posture and Gestures Can Affect the Prosodic Speaker Impact in a Remote Presentation
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Oliver Niebuhr
Abstract
Video calls have become a dominant communicative setting, and yet little is known about how nonverbal communication looks like in this setting. Continuing our line of research about nonverbal cues to perceived speaker impact, we examined in this experimental study how gestures are used in video calls, whether a sitting or standing posture alters this use and, in particular, how gestures and posture shape the speaker’s prosody. Eleven Persian native speakers participated in the experiment. The speaking task, i.e. giving a power-point presentation for an (artificial) virtual audience, included three conditions in a within-subjects design: sitting, standing, and standing with stimulated gesturing. We counted communicatively relevant gestures and acoustically analyzed speech prosody in terms of f0, voice-quality, and rhythm parameters. Results show that, without explicit stimulation, speakers do not gesture spontaneously in video-call presentations, independently of posture. However, compared to sitting, standing while presenting creates a significantly different prosody that has the potential to improve the speaker’s impact on his/her audience. This effect is further enhanced when standing speakers are stimulated to gesture while presenting. We discuss our results with respect to the interplay of non-verbal communication behavior and in terms of practical implications for public-speaker training.
Abstract
Video calls have become a dominant communicative setting, and yet little is known about how nonverbal communication looks like in this setting. Continuing our line of research about nonverbal cues to perceived speaker impact, we examined in this experimental study how gestures are used in video calls, whether a sitting or standing posture alters this use and, in particular, how gestures and posture shape the speaker’s prosody. Eleven Persian native speakers participated in the experiment. The speaking task, i.e. giving a power-point presentation for an (artificial) virtual audience, included three conditions in a within-subjects design: sitting, standing, and standing with stimulated gesturing. We counted communicatively relevant gestures and acoustically analyzed speech prosody in terms of f0, voice-quality, and rhythm parameters. Results show that, without explicit stimulation, speakers do not gesture spontaneously in video-call presentations, independently of posture. However, compared to sitting, standing while presenting creates a significantly different prosody that has the potential to improve the speaker’s impact on his/her audience. This effect is further enhanced when standing speakers are stimulated to gesture while presenting. We discuss our results with respect to the interplay of non-verbal communication behavior and in terms of practical implications for public-speaker training.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents IX
- Prosody and L2 Learning Interface: The Case of Spanish L2 and Brazilian Portuguese L1 Intonation 1
- The Role of Prosody in the Processing of Ambiguities in Brazilian Portuguese 31
- Defining and Identifying Discourse Markers in Spontaneous Speech 65
- A Contribution to a Better Understanding of Silent Pause 103
- Perceptual and Physiological Correlates of Voice Quality Settings 127
- Multimodal Analysis of Speech Attractiveness Expression 151
- Posture and Gestures Can Affect the Prosodic Speaker Impact in a Remote Presentation 181
- An Acoustic Analysis of Creaky Voice Patterns in Singing 223
- Evaluating OpenAI’s Whisper ASR for Punctuation Prediction and Topic Modeling of life histories of the Museum of the Person 247
- Index
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents IX
- Prosody and L2 Learning Interface: The Case of Spanish L2 and Brazilian Portuguese L1 Intonation 1
- The Role of Prosody in the Processing of Ambiguities in Brazilian Portuguese 31
- Defining and Identifying Discourse Markers in Spontaneous Speech 65
- A Contribution to a Better Understanding of Silent Pause 103
- Perceptual and Physiological Correlates of Voice Quality Settings 127
- Multimodal Analysis of Speech Attractiveness Expression 151
- Posture and Gestures Can Affect the Prosodic Speaker Impact in a Remote Presentation 181
- An Acoustic Analysis of Creaky Voice Patterns in Singing 223
- Evaluating OpenAI’s Whisper ASR for Punctuation Prediction and Topic Modeling of life histories of the Museum of the Person 247
- Index
