A descriptive analysis of the role of co-speech gestures in the representation of information about pain quality

Effective pain communication is essential if adequate treatment and support are to be provided. However, the communication of pain is often problematic and carries the risk of misinterpretation, particularly when communicating about the character or quality of pain. Research indicates that co-speech gestures are frequently produced during pain communication and contain important information about the pain experience (Heath, 2002; Hyden & Peolsson, 2002; Rowbotham et al., 2012); recent work revealed that information about pain quality is most often represented in both speech and gestures together (Rowbotham et al., in press). In the present study, we used qualitative methods to investigate how co-speech gestures interact with speech in the representation of pain quality. The results revealed that when both speech and gestures contained information about pain quality, gestures contributed additional information in two key ways. Firstly, gestures represented more precise information about the same aspects of pain quality as are contained in speech, thus clarifying the verbal message, and secondly, gestures added information about different (and thus entirely new) aspects of pain quality than those contained in speech, providing a fuller overall representation of the pain sensation. This suggests that gestures play an important role in representing information about pain quality and need to be attended to if we are to obtain a fuller and more precise understanding of others’ pain.