Interactions between articulation and hand movements - congruency effects in Czech

We have previously shown links between audiovisual speech categorization and manual precision and power grips. We have also demonstrated links between speech production and grips, or forward and backward hand movements in Finnish participants. Here we studied whether similar links exist for speakers of Czech. Visual stimuli were presented specifying articulations to be uttered, e.g. A and I. In Experiment 1 the articulations were randomly paired with precision or power grip responses. The congruency effect was replicated so that precision grips were faster when pronouncing KA, KE or A, compared to TI, TE or I. The pattern was reversed for power grip. In Experiment 2 the articulations were paired with forward or backward hand movements. There was no effect for KE-TE, unlike Finnish. However, the congruency effect was replicated for other stimuli, so that forward movement was faster when pronouncing I rather than A or O, and vice versa for backward movement. These findings show that the links between articulation and hand movements we have previously discovered are not specific to Finnish, but extend also to another language. We predict that these effects would be reflected into speech perception, too, largely independently of language background.