Communication seems natural to us, but there are plenty of situations where background noise makes it hard for us to understand each other. In those moments, gesturing can come in handy, particularly if conversations in your native language are taking place in the background. This has been shown in research by psycholinguist Veerle Wilms in cooperation with Susanne Brouwer and Linda Drijvers. Their paper is published on 19 April in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.