WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, I ENVIED SALLY CULVER. Though she was five years younger, she had somehow managed to get herself a fan club. It began one summer evening, when Mrs. Culver brought her 1 year-old ...

Applause is greatly revered as a symbol of warmth and adoration from a crowd. TV shows that film in front of a live audience often cue their audiences to clap in order to generate the desired auditory ...

Clapping is a behavior so deeply rooted in human beings it’s almost an instinct. You can see babies and toddlers clapping just because everybody else is, and if you’ve ever felt the pressure to be ...

Hand clapping is ubiquitous behavior for humans across time and cultures, serving many different purposes: to signify approval with applause, for instance, or to keep time to music. Acousticians often ...

Primitive though they may be, given just a simple audio recording of a single handclap, is it possible to determine the hand-configuration of the clapper via a computer-assisted digital analysis of ...

This post is co-authored by Ron Riggio and nonverbal communication expert Alan Crawley. When and why do we clap? We get startled, and we clap. We try to get our dog’s (or our child’s) attention, and ...

The sound of Paul McCartney and Wings’ “One Hand Clapping” used to only be heard on bootlegs, or in snippets available on archival releases over the years. But it’s new (mostly) complete official ...