Abstract des Autors

The review provides an interdisciplinary overview on the spectrum of coding systems that have been designed to analyze movement behaviour as a reflection of emotional, cognitive, and interactive functions as well as their disturbances. Many of the systems are primarily descriptive with regard to the visual appearance of the body movements. These are notably those of the first group, i.e., Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), Kinesic analysis, Movement Signature Analysis (MSA), but also the Movement Psychodiagnostic Inventory, some scales for 'neuroleptic-induced' alterations, and the apraxia coding systems. Among the gesture coding systems, Kimura's, Freedman's and Efron's system provide some descriptions of the visual appearance of the gestures and self­touches. While, otherwise, the gesture coding systems primarily refer to the function of the movement, it has been argued that their values could likewise be identified based on movement criteria. Some gesture values are confounded with linguistic values. Comprehensiveness applies mainly to the first group and to the MPI. These comprise several classes of body movements (MSA, MPI, Kinesic analysis) and register the quality of movement (LMA, MSA, MPI). The movement of several parts of the body or of the body as a whole is coded. These systems provide a complete picture of an individual's movement repertoire. However, their application is time-consuming and therefore, the analysis is limited to movement behaviour samples of a few minutes. Among the gesture analysis systems, Freedman's system is the most comprehensive one, as it comprises the two classes gesture and self-touch, the latter including implicit movements. All movements of the hands and arms are coded. Ekman and Friesen's system is comprehensive as well but the values are not descriptive with regard to the visual appearance of the movements. The coding systems for movement psychopathology are limited to a very narrow range of movements, with the exception of the MPI. The apraxia coding systems are practically limited to explicit body movements. Limb movement laterality, in terms of right, left, and both at a time, has mainly been studied with Kimura's and Freedman's systems. No coding system provides a differentiated coding of the relation between the two hands (or feet) during simultaneous movements, such as dominance of one hand in bimanual movements or the hands acting as a unit. Movement patterns, i.e., recurrent combinations of different movement types displayed by different parts of the body at a time or recurrent sequences of movement types, can be detected primarily with Kinesics, MSA, and MPI. Recurrent sequences could, theoretically, also be identified with Freedman's system as all movements of the hands are coded in a given interval of time. With the exception of Freedman's value continuous body focused, the duration of movement units has not been investigated. To explore the temporal dimension of movement behaviour a system is required that segments the ongoing stream of movement into natural units such that any moment in time is considered and attributed to a unit. The MSA and the Kinesic analysis could, theoretically, be used for this purpose, but given their limitation to a few minutes of analysis, general conclusions about the temporal dimension of movement units with a specific value cannot be drawn. While Objectivity and Reliability have been the criteria for the coding systems to be included in the review, a final note on the validity shall be given. As it has been noted above, for none of the existing systems the validity can be judged as sufficiently established with regard to current psychometric standards. For Efron's referential coding system some degree of validity can be assumed, since other - more or less independent - researchers have arrived at similar assumptions about the meaning of certain gesture values that are characterized by a specific visual appearance. Other coding systems that make an explicit claim about the validity require a careful examination. This applies especially to the scales for neuroleptic side effects concerning the aetiology of the respective alterations and to the Kestenberg Movement Profile (KMP) regarding the association with developmental stages. To conclude, the interdisciplinary review reveals that across scientific disciplines a variety of different coding systems are available. These systems have different advantages and disadvantages for application in basic empirical research.
The first section of this chapter addresses the question what empirical evidence supports the paradigm that human movement behaviour is linked to cognitive, emotional, and interactive processes. The implications of these findings for movement research methodology are discussed.
Empirical evidence that movement behaviour is linked to cognitive, emotional, and interactive processes legitimates the application of movement behaviour analysis as a valid method to explore these processes. However, for this purpose numerous questionnaires are already available which are economic psychological research tools. Therefore, the second section focuses on the question what specific potential movement behaviour analysis bears for the investigation of emotional, cognitive, and interactive processes.
The third and fourth sections illustrate the profit of analyzing all movements of a part of the body and of segmenting the ongoing stream of movement behaviour into natural units as compared to pre-selecting certain types of movement for the analysis. Finally, the fifth section discusses why it is useful to distinguish between right side, left side, and bilateral movements when analyzing limb movements such as hand gestures.