title: Hand movements and nondominant fluency in bilinguals.
abstract: 16 subordinate bilingual subjects produced 5-min. monologues in their nondominant languages, i.e., English or Spanish. Hand-movement activity manifested during the videotape monologues was scored and related to measures of fluency in the nondominant language. The hand-movement behavior categorized as Groping Movement was significantly related to all of the nondominant-language fluency measures. These correlations support the assumption that Groping Movement may have a function in the process of verbal encoding. The results are discussed in terms of the possibility of monitoring central cognitive processes through the study of "visible" motor behavior.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006225:Hand; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009633:Nonverbal Communication