Psychosomatic Medicine 17:458-469 (1955)
© 1955 American Psychosomatic Society

Gestural Movement During Psychiatric Interview

¹ The Institute of Psychiatry, The Maudsley Hospital, London

A method is described of measuring the gestural movements made by patients during psychiatric interview by means of an electromyograph and integrator which sums and records only the high amplitude muscle potentials accompanying movements.

Gestural movements were measured every half minute in 16 interviews. The interviews were divided into periods in which stressful and unstressful topics were discussed, and it was found that significantly more movements occurred in the stressful periods.

In 3 interviews each utterance was rated for the disturbance of affect manifested. The ratio of moves to words was scored for each utterance: the higher ratings were accompanied by significantly more gesture.

The utterances were grouped into topics. The topics which were most affectively disturbing to the patient (by prediction from the case history and from the ratings independently given to the utterances composing the topics) were accompanied by significantly more movement. Resentment was the affect associated with most gesture.

Four patients were interviewed a second time. The topics which had been accompanied by the most gesture in the first interview were also those with the most gesture in the second. These patients' gestures, therefore, were consistently related to the content of the interview.

The stressful periods were accompanied by an increase in heart rate as well as in gestural movement. The changes in heart rate validated assumption of the disturbing effect of some topics.

It was suggested that as gestural or spontaneous movements and visceral occurrences in emotion are behaviorally interdependent so are they physiologically mediated and coordinated by hypothalamic mechanisms.

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