When we realize we’ve said something in error and we pause to go back to correct it, we stop gesturing a couple of hundred milliseconds before we stop speaking. Such sequences suggest the startling notion that our hands “know” what we’re going to say before our conscious minds do, and in fact this is often the case. Gesture can mentally prime a word so that the right term comes to our lips.
When people are prevented from gesturing, they talk less fluently; their speech becomes halting because