Author Description

Gestures are often used during conversations to facilitate comprehension and speech production. Yet, it is not clear which specific features of gesture training enhance learning in speech perception and production. The present study examined naive participants' ability to perceive and produce novel phonemes (Mandarin tones). We asked whether learning would vary with the amount of sensory information available during training (auditory and visual) and the presence of a motor event (from saying speech and/or performance of gestures that illustrated the pitch in each of the tones (pitch gestures). Native English speakers participated in one of six training conditions where they were told to: perform pitch gestures and say the phoneme, watch pitch gestures and say the phoneme, perform pitch gestures only, watch pitch gestures only, say the phoneme only, or none of the above (baseline). Participants' ability to accurately identify Mandarin tones and to produce Mandarin tones was assessed before training, immediately after training, and a day later. The results supported the hypothesis that the performance of gestures facilitated learning in speech perception and production under certain scenarios, but it does so differently for perception relative to production.