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When people speak, they often spontaneously produce gestures. Those gestures are typically used to indicate or represent objects and ideas. UW-Madison education professor Martha W. Alibali and colleagues have found that gestures do more than help a speaker generate the surface forms of utterances. Rather, gestures help speakers conceptualize the message. It follows that gesture may play a role not only in speech production, but also in cognitive activity more generally. Alibali and colleagues believe that any theory of human performance will not be complete without an understanding of the role of gesture in cognitive activity.

More information is available here: http://psych.wisc.edu/faculty/bio/alibali.html.