The Effect of Iconic and Beat Gestures on Memory Recall in Greek’s First and Second Language

Gestures play a major role in comprehension and
memory recall due to the fact that aid the efficient channel of
the meaning and support listeners’ comprehension and memory. In
the present study, the assistance of two kinds of gestures (iconic
and beat gestures) is tested in regards to memory and recall. The
hypothesis investigated here is whether or not iconic and beat gestures
provide assistance in memory and recall in Greek and in Greek
speakers’ second language. Two groups of participants were formed,
one comprising Greeks that reside in Athens and one with Greeks
that reside in Copenhagen. Three kinds of stimuli were used: A video
with words accompanied with iconic gestures, a video with words
accompanied with beat gestures and a video with words alone. The
languages used are Greek and English. The words in the English
videos were spoken by a native English speaker and by a Greek
speaker talking English. The reason for this is that when it comes to
beat gestures that serve a meta-cognitive function and are generated
according to the intonation of a language, prosody plays a major
role. Thus, participants that have different influences in prosody may
generate different results from rhythmic gestures. Memory recall was
assessed by asking the participants to try to remember as many
words as they could after viewing each video. Results show that
iconic gestures provide significant assistance in memory and recall
in Greek and in English whether they are produced by a native or
a second language speaker. In the case of beat gestures though, the
findings indicate that beat gestures may not play such a significant
role in Greek language. As far as intonation is concerned, a significant
difference was not found in the case of beat gestures produced by a
native English speaker and by a Greek speaker talking English.

Authors:

• Eleni Ioanna Levantinou

Keywords:

• First language
• gestures
• memory
• second language acquisition.

References:

[1] Martha W Alibali, Dana C Heath, and Heather J Myers. Effects of
visibility between speaker and listener on gesture production: Some
gestures are meant to be seen. Journal of Memory and Language,
44(2):169–188, 2001.
[2] Martha W Alibali, Sotaro Kita, and Amanda J Young. Gesture and the
process of speech production: We think, therefore we gesture. Language
and cognitive processes, 15(6):593–613, 2000.
[3] Amalia Arvaniti and Mary Baltazani. Intonational analysis and prosodic
annotation of greek spoken corpora. Prosodic typology: The phonology
of intonation and phrasing, pages 84–117, 2005.
[4] Mary Baltazani. Pragmatics, intonation, and word order in greek.
Interfaces prosodiques, pages 14–19, 2003.
[5] Mary Baltazani. Intonation and pragmatic interpretation of negation in
greek. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(10):1658–1676, 2006.
[6] Antonis Botinis. The greek vowels. Working Papers in
Linguistics-Phonetics, 21:29–36, 1981.
[7] Antonis Botinis. Stress and prosodic structure in greek. A phonological,
acoustic, physiological and perceptual study, 1989.
[8] Anthi Chaida. Tonal structures of complex sentences in greek. In
Proc. of the 8th Internation Conference on Greek Linguistics. Ioannina,
Greece, 2007.
[9] James M Clark and Allan Paivio. Dual coding theory and education.
Educational psychology review, 3(3):149–210, 1991.
[10] Ronald L Cohen and Graham Bean. Memory in educable mentally
retarded adults: Deficit in subject or experimenter? Intelligence,
7(3):287–298, 1983.
[11] Ronald L Cohen and Nicola Otterbein. The mnemonic effect of
speech gestures: Pantomimic and non-pantomimic gestures compared.
European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 4(2):113–139, 1992.
[12] Susan Wagner Cook and Michael K Tanenhaus. Embodied
communication: Speakers gestures affect listeners actions. Cognition,
113(1):98–104, 2009.
[13] Susan Wagner Cook, Terina KuangYi Yip, and Susan Goldin-Meadow.
Gesturing makes memories that last. Journal of memory and language,
63(4):465–475, 2010.
[14] Johannes Engelkamp and Ronald L Cohen. Current issues in memory
of action events. Psychological Research, 53(3):175–182, 1991.
[15] Pierre Feyereisen. Further investigation on the mnemonic effect of
gestures: Their meaning matters. European Journal of Cognitive
Psychology, 18(2):185–205, 2006.
[16] Susan Goldin-Meadow and David McNeill. The role of gesture and
mimetic representation in making language the province of speech. na,
1999.
[17] Susan Goldin-Meadow, Howard Nusbaum, Spencer D Kelly, and Susan
Wagner. Explaining math: Gesturing lightens the load. Psychological
Science, 12(6):516–522, 2001.
[18] Marianne Gullberg. Gesture as a communication strategy in second
language discourse: A study of learners of French and Swedish,
volume 35. Lund University, 1998.
[19] Marianne Gullberg. Gestures, referents, and anaphoric linkage in
learner varieties. Information structure and the dynamics of language
acquisition, pages 311–328, 2003.
[20] Marianne Gullberg. Handling discourse: Gestures, reference tracking,
and communication strategies in early l2. Language Learning,
56(1):155–196, 2006.
[21] Marianne Gullberg. Gestures and second language acquisition.
Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition,
pages 276–305, 2008.
[22] Marianne Gullberg. Gestures and the development of semantic
representations in first and second language acquisition. Acquisition
et interaction en langue ´etrang`ere, 1(1):117–139, 2009.
[23] Marianne Gullberg, Leah Roberts, Christine Dimroth, Kim Veroude, and
Peter Indefrey. Adult language learning after minimal exposure to an
unknown natural language. Language Learning, 60(s2):5–24, 2010.
[24] Amy L Hubbard, Kristin McNealy, Scott-Van Zeeland, A Ashley,
Daniel E Callan, Susan Y Bookheimer, and Mirella Dapretto. Altered
integration of speech and gesture in children with autism spectrum
disorders. Brain and behavior, 2(5):606–619, 2012.
[25] Naomi Jacobs and Alan Garnham. The role of conversational hand
gestures in a narrative task. Journal of Memory and Language,
56(2):291–303, 2007.
[26] Spencer D Kelly, Dale J Barr, R Breckinridge Church, and Katheryn
Lynch. Offering a hand to pragmatic understanding: The role of speech
and gesture in comprehension and memory. Journal of memory and
Language, 40(4):577–592, 1999. [27] Spencer D Kelly, Tara McDevitt, and Megan Esch. Brief training with
co-speech gesture lends a hand to word learning in a foreign language.
Language and cognitive processes, 24(2):313–334, 2009.
[28] Adam Kendon. Do gestures communicate? a review. Research on
language and social interaction, 27(3):175–200, 1994.
[29] Sotaro Kita. How representational gestures help speaking. Language
and gesture, pages 162–185, 2000.
[30] Robert M Krauss, Yihsiu Chen, and Rebecca F Gotfexnum. 13 lexical
gestures and lexical access: a process model. Language and gesture,
2:261, 2000.
[31] Eleni Levantinou and Costanza Navarretta. A case study of the
mnemonic effect of beat and iconic gestures in l2. In Pre-proceedings
of 3rd European Symposium on Multimodal Communication, Dublin,
2015.
[32] Eleni Ioanna Levantinou. The role of iconic and beat gesture on second
language acquisition. a case study of mnemonic effect of the different
types of gestures on l2. In Unpublished semester project, 2015.
[33] Manuela Macedonia, Kirsten Bergmann, and Friedrich Roithmayr.
Imitation of a pedagogical agents gestures enhances memory for words
in second language. Science Journal of Education, 2(5):162–169, 2014.
[34] Manuela Macedonia, Karsten M¨uller, and Angela D Friederici. The
impact of iconic gestures on foreign language word learning and its
neural substrate. Human brain mapping, 32(6):982–998, 2011.
[35] Steven G McCafferty. Space for cognition: Gesture and second language
learning. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14(1):148–165,
2004.
[36] David McNeill. Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought.
University of Chicago press, 1992.
[37] David McNeill. Imagery in motion event descriptions: Gesture as part
of thinking-for-speaking in three languages. In Annual Meeting of the
Berkeley Linguistics Society, volume 23, pages 255–267, 1997.
[38] Roxana Moreno and Richard E Mayer. A learner-centered approach
to multimedia explanations: Deriving instructional design principles
from cognitive theory. Interactive multimedia electronic journal of
computer-enhanced learning, 2(2):12–20, 2000.
[39] Laura M Morett. When hands speak louder than words: The role of
gesture in the communication, encoding, and recall of words in a novel
second language. The Modern Language Journal, 98(3):834–853, 2014.
[40] Ezequiel Morsella and Robert M Krauss. The role of gestures in spatial
working memory and speech. The American journal of psychology,
pages 411–424, 2004.
[41] Lars-G¨oran Nilsson and Fergus IM Craik. Additive and interactive
effects in memory for subject-performed tasks. European Journal of
Cognitive Psychology, 2(4):305–324, 1990.
[42] Lars Nyberg. Levels of processing: A view from functional brain
imaging. Memory, 10(5-6):345–348, 2002.
[43] Asli O¨ zyu¨rek. Do speakers design their cospeech gestures for
their addressees? the effects of addressee location on representational
gestures. Journal of Memory and Language, 46(4):688–704, 2002.
[44] Wing Chee So, Colin Sim Chen-Hui, and Julie Low Wei-Shan.
Mnemonic effect of iconic gesture and beat gesture in adults and
children: Is meaning in gesture important for memory recall? Language
and Cognitive Processes, 27(5):665–681, 2012.
[45] Marion Tellier. The effect of gestures on second language memorisation
by young children. Gesture, 8(2):219–235, 2008.
[46] Susan M Wagner, Howard Nusbaum, and Susan Goldin-Meadow.
Probing the mental representation of gesture: Is handwaving spatial?
Journal of Memory and Language, 50(4):395–407, 2004.
[47] Ying Choon Wu and Seana Coulson. How iconic gestures enhance
communication: An erp study. Brain and language, 101(3):234–245,
2007.