Motion capture-based animated characters for the study of speech–gesture integration

Digitally animated characters are promising tools in research studying how we integrate information from speech and visual sources such as gestures because they allow specific gesture features to be manipulated in isolation. We present an approach combining motion capture and 3D-animated characters that allows us to manipulate natural individual gesture strokes for experimental purposes, for example to temporally shift and present gestures in ecologically valid sequences. We exemplify how such stimuli can be used in an experiment investigating implicit detection of speech–gesture (a) synchrony, and discuss the general applicability of the workflow for research in this domain.