Speakers often accompany speech with spontaneous beat gestures in natural spoken communication. These gestures are usually aligned with lexical stress and can modulate the saliency of their affiliate words. Here we addressed the consequences of beat gestures on the neural correlates of speech perception. Previous studies have highlighted the role played by theta oscillations in temporal prediction of speech. We hypothesized that the sight of beat gestures may influence ongoing low-frequency neural oscillations around the onset of the corresponding words. Electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings were acquired while participants watched a continuous, naturally recorded discourse. The phase-locking/nvalue (PLV) at word onset was calculated from the EEG from pairs of identical words that had been pronounced with and without a concurrent beat gesture in the discourse. We observed an increase in PLV in the 5e6 Hz theta range as well as a desynchronization in the 8e10 Hz alpha band around the onset of words preceded by a beat gesture. These findings suggest that beats help tune low-frequency oscillatory activity at relevant moments during natural speech perception, providing a new insight of how speech and paralinguistic information are integrated.

This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PSI2013-42626-P), AGAUR Generalitat de Catalunya (2014SGR856) and, the European Research Council (StG-2010 263145).