Neuropsychological functions of nonverbal hand movements and gestures during sports

Emotional body-distant gestures are a prominent feature of winning athletes. Because negative emotions have been associated to increased self-touch behaviour, we investigated the hypothesis that athletes change from a more body-distant nonverbal hand movement behaviour when winning to a body-focused behaviour when losing. Nonverbal hand movements of professional right-handed tennis athletes were video-taped during competition and analyzed by...