Language-Related Hand Gestures in Psychopaths

Hand gestures were coded from videotaped interviews of right-handed male prison inmates divided into high (H), medium (M), and low (L) psychopathy groups on the basis of the Psychopathy Checklist (Hare, 1980). There was no difference among groups in the number of hand gestures not related to language or in iconic gestures, that is, gestures that directly reflect the semantic content of speech. Compared with the other groups, Group H used significantly more beats, defined as language-related gestures that do not reflect the semantic content of speech, but that may serve to divide the discourse into discrete functional units (McNeill, 1985). It is possible that the central language processes of psychopaths are organized into relatively small conceptual units. The results are consistent with other research in suggesting the psychopaths differ from normal individuals in the processing and use of language.