Prominence in speech and gesture favour second language novel word learning

Kushch, Olga; Igualada, Alfonso; Prieto, Pilar

doi:10.1080/23273798.2018.1435894

Cited by 33 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…A way of dissociating between the motor-trace and the motorimagery account would be the use of beats and deictic gestures. Previous studies have evaluated the role of these gestures in L2 learning (Kushch, Igualada, & Prieto, 2018;Morett, 2014;So et al, 2012). For example, Morett showed that the use of beat and deictic gestures facilitated the recall of words in a language not familiar to the participants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning nouns and verbs in a foreign language: The role of gestures

García-Gámez

Macizo

2018

Applied Psycholinguistics

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We evaluated the impact of gestures on second language (L2) vocabulary learning with nouns (Experiment 1) and verbs (Experiment 2). Four training methods were compared: the learning of L2 words with congruent gestures, incongruent gestures, meaningless gestures, and no gestures. Better vocabulary learning was found in both experiments when participants learned L2 words with congruent gestures relative to the no gesture condition. This result indicates that gestures have a positive effect on L2 learning when there is a match between the word meaning and the gesture. However, the recall of words in the incongruent and meaningless gesture conditions was lower than that of the no gesture condition. This suggests that gestures might have a negative impact on L2 learning. The facilitation and interference effects we found with the use of gestures in L2 vocabulary acquisition are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning nouns and verbs in a foreign language: The role of gestures

García-Gámez

Macizo

2018

Applied Psycholinguistics

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“…The authors claimed that beat gestures may have in fact increased the learners' cognitive load, as they have not yet learned how to interpret these gestures. Another study by Kushch et al (2018) presented novel Russian vocabulary words to naïve Catalan learners in a carrier sentence, such as "Bossa es diu 'sumka' en rus" (translation: "Bag is called 'sumka' in Russian"). The target word (sumka) was presented in 4 conditions: Accompaniment with neither a (L + H * ) pitch accent nor a gesture; Accompanied with a (L + H * ) pitch accent (no gesture); Accompanied with a gesture (no pitch accent); or Accompanied with both a (L + H * ) pitch accent and gesture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beat Gestures for Comprehension and Recall: Differential Effects of Language Learners and Native Listeners

2020

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Previous work has shown how native listeners benefit from observing iconic gestures during speech comprehension tasks of both degraded and non-degraded speech. By contrast, effects of the use of gestures in non-native listener populations are less clear and studies have mostly involved iconic gestures. The current study aims to complement these findings by testing the potential beneficial effects of beat gestures (non-referential gestures which are often used for information-and discourse marking) on language recall and discourse comprehension using a narrative-drawing task carried out by native and non-native listeners. Using a within-subject design, 51 French intermediate learners of English participated in a narrative-drawing task. Each participant was assigned 8 videos to watch, where a native speaker describes the events of a short comic strip. Videos were presented in random order, in four conditions: in Native listening conditions with frequent, naturally-modeled beat gestures, in Native listening conditions without any gesture, in Non-native listening conditions with frequent, naturally-modeled beat gestures, and in Non-native listening conditions without any gesture. Participants watched each video twice and then immediately recreated the comic strip through their own drawings. Participants' drawings were then evaluated for discourse comprehension (via their ability to convey the main goals of the narrative through their drawings) and recall (via the number of gesturally-marked elements in the narration that were included in their drawings). Results showed that for native listeners, beat gestures had no significant effect on either recall or comprehension. In non-native speech, however, beat gestures led to significantly lower comprehension and recall scores. These results suggest that frequent, naturally-modeled beat gestures in longer discourses may increase cognitive load for language learners, resulting in negative effects on both memory and language understanding. These findings add to the growing body of literature that suggests that gesture benefits are not a "one-sizefits-all" solution, but rather may be contingent on factors such as language proficiency and gesture rate, particularly in that whenever beat gestures are repeatedly used in discourse, they inherently lose their saliency as markers of important information.

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“…For example, even beat gestures, which often have little inherent semantic connection to speech, affect L1 speech processing (Krahmer and Swerts, 2007;Biau and Soto-Faraco, 2013;Wang and Chu, 2013) and memory (So et al, 2012). And in an L2 context, there is evidence that viewing and producing a range of hand movements-beat gestures (Kushch et al, 2018), metaphoric pitch gestures representing lexical tone (Morett and Chang, 2015;Baills et al, 2019) and even iconic gestures with idiosyncratic meanings (Macedonia and Klimesch, 2014;Huang et al, 2019)-can help with L2 vocabulary learning and retention. Connecting these findings to the present study, it is interesting that the presence of any gesture increased memory for speech in Experiment 1 (both gesture conditions produced a ∼30% improvement in recall over speech alone) and decreased the number of "misheard" utterances in Experiment 2 (both gesture conditions reduced errors by over 60% compared to speech alone).…”

Section: Culturally Unfamiliar Gestures Help Variablymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many of the experiments on this topic have focused on how L2 learners attend to information conveyed through the hands when perceiving novel speech sounds ( Hannah et al, 2017 ; Kelly, 2017 ; Kushch et al, 2018 ; Baills et al, 2019 ; Hoetjes et al, 2019 ) and comprehending new vocabulary ( Allen, 1995 ; Sueyoshi and Hardison, 2005 ; Sime, 2006 ; Kelly et al, 2009 ; Morett, 2014 ; Morett and Chang, 2015 ; Baills et al, 2019 ; Huang et al, 2019 ). For example, Kelly et al (2009) investigated how semantic congruence of gesture and speech affected the learning of L2 Japanese vocabulary in native English speakers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emblem Gestures Improve Perception and Evaluation of Non-native Speech

et al. 2020

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Traditionally, much of the attention on the communicative effects of non-native accent has focused on the accent itself rather than how it functions within a more natural context. The present study explores how the bodily context of co-speech emblematic gestures affects perceptual and social evaluation of non-native accent. In two experiments in two different languages, Mandarin and Japanese, we filmed learners performing a short utterance in three different within-subjects conditions: speech alone, culturally familiar gesture, and culturally unfamiliar gesture. Native Mandarin participants watched videos of foreign-accented Mandarin speakers (Experiment 1), and native Japanese participants watched videos of foreign-accented Japanese speakers (Experiment 2). Following each video, native language participants were asked a set of questions targeting speech perception and social impressions of the learners. Results from both experiments demonstrate that familiar-and occasionally unfamiliaremblems facilitated speech perception and enhanced social evaluations compared to the speech alone baseline. The variability in our findings suggests that gesture may serve varied functions in the perception and evaluation of non-native accent.

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Prominence in speech and gesture favour second language novel word learning

Cited by 33 publications

References 44 publications

Learning nouns and verbs in a foreign language: The role of gestures

Learning nouns and verbs in a foreign language: The role of gestures

Beat Gestures for Comprehension and Recall: Differential Effects of Language Learners and Native Listeners

Emblem Gestures Improve Perception and Evaluation of Non-native Speech

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