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Not All Gestures are Created Equal: The Effects of Typical and Atypical Iconic
Gestures on Narrative Comprehension

Article  in  Journal of Nonverbal Behavior · March 2018

DOI: 10.1007/s10919-018-0278-3

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J Nonverbal Behav
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-018-0278-3

ORIGINAL PAPER

Not All Gestures are Created Equal: The Effects

of Typical and Atypical Iconic Gestures on Narrative
Comprehension

Nicole Dargue1   · Naomi Sweller1

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract  Observing hand gestures during learning consistently benefits learners across
a variety of tasks. How observation of gestures benefits learning, however, is yet unan-
swered, and cannot be answered without further understanding which types of gestures
aid learning. Specifically, the effects of observing varying types of iconic gestures are yet
to be established. Across two studies we examined the role that observing different types
of iconic hand gestures has in assisting adult narrative comprehension. Some iconic hand
gestures (typical gestures) were produced more frequently than others (atypical gestures).
Crucially, observing these different types of gestures during a narrative comprehension
task did not provide equal benefit for comprehension. Rather, observing typical gestures
significantly enhanced narrative comprehension beyond observing atypical gestures or no
gestures. We argue that iconic gestures may be split into separate categories of typical and
atypical gestures, which in turn have differential effects on narrative comprehension.

Keywords  Narrative comprehension · Iconic gesture · Learning · Communication

Introduction

Our ability to communicate is vital for our day-to-day interactions (Littlejohn and Foss
2010). While “communication” is often used to describe verbal messages, the nonverbal
component of communication, including gestures, is similarly of great importance. When
we interact, we do more than just exchange verbal messages: we might point to indicate
direction or draw attention to an object, or we might make an action to accentuate a spo-
ken message (Kelly et al. 1999). These nonverbal movements performed by the hands or

* Nicole Dargue
nicole.dargue@students.mq.edu.au
Naomi Sweller
naomi.sweller@mq.edu.au
1
Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia

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 J Nonverbal Behav

arms, termed gestures, provide an external support to verbal communication (McNeil et al.
2000). While speech is primarily used to describe a situation, object, or action, gestures
function to draw attention to, or visually depict a situation, object, or action (Kelly et al.
1999). Through accentuating a spoken message, gestures may benefit an observer’s learn-
ing. While the benefits of gesture are apparent for speech comprehension (Driskell and
Radtke 2003) and problem-solving (Alibali and DiRusso 1999; Chu and Kita 2011), little
research concerns narrative comprehension.
Narrative comprehension, the ability to interpret and make meaning of a story, is an
important, if not the most important, cognitive tool for human development (Hough 1990;
Lyle 2000; Schmithorst et al. 2006). We use narratives to produce meaning out of actions
and events, indicating the crucial impact of narrative comprehension on communication
(Lyle 2000). While the ability to comprehend narratives is important in children, allowing
them to narrate their needs and feelings as well as understand those of others (Paris and
Paris 2003), narrative comprehension is similarly crucial to adults. One’s understanding of
moral and ethical concepts important in professional practice, such as in medicine, law, and
education can be enhanced through one’s ability to comprehend narratives (Lyle 2000).
Consequently, understanding the benefits of observing gesture on narrative comprehension
could have valuable repercussions for learning.
It is theorized that speech and gesture combine to form a single underlying verbal-ges-
tural communication system, whereby information that is presented by speech and gesture
is processed simultaneously to form a single representation (McNeill 1992). Willems et al.
(2006) supported this theory, showing through functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) that speech and gesture recruit overlapping areas of the brain. In addition, Kelly
et al. (2010) lent further support through their investigation of the automaticity of the inte-
gration of speech and gesture in a Stroop-like language comprehension task. They found
that the reaction time of participants was significantly slower when presented with incon-
gruent speech-gesture stimuli as compared to congruent speech-gesture stimuli. While this
was modulated by context to an extent (i.e., reaction time was faster when the same person
produced the gesture and the word compared to when different people produced the gesture
and the word), the findings of Kelly et al. (2010) provide evidence that the integration of
speech and gesture is to a degree automatic. It therefore appears that speech and gesture are
integrated to form a single verbal-gestural communication system as argued by McNeill
(1992).
Research has also suggested that listeners decode gesture and speech simultaneously
when viewing a narrative (Cassell et al. 1999). This information is then used to form a uni-
fied representation of the story, suggesting that gesture together with speech influences nar-
rative comprehension (Cassell et al. 1999). University students recalled more events from a
story when the narrator gestured congruently with speech than when the story was narrated
through speech only (Cutica and Bucciarelli 2008; Galati and Samuel 2011). Given that
gesture has been shown to assist speech comprehension, observing gestures is expected to
benefit narrative comprehension. However, not all gestures are created equal: if we are to
learn from gestures then the types of gestures observed are likely to be important.
While gestures can be categorized as deictic, metaphoric, beat, or iconic in nature,
iconic gestures are the focus of the current paper. Iconic gestures exhibit a concrete mean-
ing, typically an object or action, which is semantically related to speech (Beattie and
Shovelton 1999). For example, a person moving their hand upward while stating “a plane
flew up into the sky”, representing the action of the plane rising. These concrete, meaning-
ful gestures have been hypothesized to be important in the evolution of language (Arbib
et al. 2008). Typically, however, iconic gestures are treated as homogeneous in the gesture

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literature, with no attention given to different types of iconic gestures. It may be that some
iconic gestures are more beneficial for learning than others.
Past research that has investigated the effectiveness of observing iconic gestures in
learning has found conflicting results. For example, Kelly and Church (1998) compared
the effect of iconic gestures on speech recall compared to no gestures in university students
and 10-year old children. No significant differences were found across conditions in chil-
dren, or between the no gesture and iconic gesture condition. In comparison, iconic ges-
tures were found to benefit the speech comprehension of preschool aged children compared
to no gestures in a study by McNeil et al. (2000). A similar finding was also reported by
Macoun and Sweller (2016), who found that observing iconic gestures significantly ben-
efitted the narrative comprehension of preschool aged children compared to no gestures.
Despite these studies all using iconic gestures, it is possible that the specific iconic gestures
used by Kelly and Church (1998) were in some way less effective than the iconic gestures
used by McNeil et al. (2000) and Macoun and Sweller (2016).
Different kinds of gestures, including deictic, beat, and iconic gestures, have been shown
to be produced at different rates when relaying a spatial message (Austin and Sweller 2018,
in press). Perhaps this extends within the category of iconic gestures, such that some iconic
gestures are more commonly produced with certain words or phrases than others. That is,
they are produced more frequently in the absence of specific instruction. It is possible that
this could be the product of motor factors (i.e., they are easier or more efficient to produce),
resemblance (i.e., they look more like the action that is being represented), or the fact that
they are simply more common in usage (i.e., more automatic or ritualized). It is possible
that gestures that are produced frequently (typical gestures) may benefit learning (including
narrative comprehension) to a greater extent than gestures that are produced infrequently
(atypical gestures).
One potential reason that typical gestures could be more beneficial to narrative com-
prehension is through focusing attention to the content of the accompanying speech.
Through drawing attention to specific elements of a spoken message, the observation of
gesture appears to support and expand upon verbally presented information, which in turn
may facilitate comprehension (McNeill 1992). Such a theory is supported by findings that
individuals have increased brain activity, particularly within the Superior Temporal Sulcus
(STS) and Superior Temporal Gyrus (STG), when they observe gestures in combination
with speech as compared to when they are presented with a spoken message only (Hubbard
et  al. 2009). Further research in this area has also found increased activation in the STS
and the left inferior frontal cortex when iconic gestures specifically are observed in com-
bination with speech (Holle et al. 2008; Willems et al. 2006). It is notable that increased
activation in the left inferior frontal cortex in particular has been observed both when co-
speech iconic gestures matched the semantic meaning of the given sentence and when the
co-speech gestures matched the semantic meaning of the given sentence to a much lesser
extent (Willems et  al. 2006). Although the activation noted was greater when individu-
als observed gestures that matched the semantic meaning of a given sentence compared to
individuals who observed gestures that matched the semantic meaning of a given sentence
to a much lesser extent (Willems et al. 2006), both forms of gesture appeared to focus atten-
tion. Given the established role of the STS, STG, and left inferior frontal cortex in speech
processing and comprehension, such findings suggest that the observation of iconic ges-
tures regardless of their semantic relatedness to the co-occurring speech may indeed focus
an individual’s attention on the content of speech, in turn potentially increasing compre-
hension (Hubbard et al. 2009). As a result, although semantically related typical gestures
would be expected to capture attention and increase comprehension to the greatest extent,

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it may be that even atypical gestures could capture one’s attention, and improve compre-
hension in this way to a greater extent than when no co-speech gestures are presented.
Alternatively, it might be that atypical gestures are less semantically related to the con-
tent of accompanying speech. According to Woodall and Folger (1981), because iconic
gestures offer semantically meaningful visual features to be encoded that represent the
content of speech, the presented information should be processed more deeply and thus
enhance recall. That is, observing iconic gestures while encoding spoken information
should enhance recall to a greater extent than when no gestures or gestures that are not
semantically related to speech are observed. Such an idea stems from research by Craik and
Lockhart (1972) and Craik and Tulving (1975) which lead to the Depth of Processing The-
ory. This research suggests that semantically meaningful contextual cues are processed and
thus encoded more deeply than cues that are not semantically meaningful (i.e., visual or
phonetic information), resulting in enhanced encoding of the presented information (Craik
and Lockhart 1972; Craik and Tulving 1975).
Our goal was to examine whether all iconic gestures are equal. Specifically, whether the
observation of some iconic gestures (i.e., typical gestures) benefits narrative comprehen-
sion to a greater extent than others (i.e., atypical gestures). In Study 1, we established ges-
tures that may be classed as typical for a given narrative, determined by their unprompted
production by participants. Using these gestures, in Study 2, we addressed whether typical
and atypical gestures have differential effects on learning.

Study 1

Research investigating iconic gestures with narrative comprehension is sparse (see Macoun
and Sweller 2016), and what little research exists treats iconic gestures as homogenous. In
Study 1 we examined the different iconic gestures that children and adults produce when
re-telling a visual narrative. Participants were either instructed to gesture while re-telling
the narrative, or were given no instructions regarding gesture. By examining the gestures
performed when retelling the narrative, we identified distinct gestures for subsequent use in
a narrative comprehension task.

Method

Participants

Thirty-two adults and 37 children participated in the study. Children were recruited from
independent pre-schools in the Sydney area, and included 16 females and 21 males rang-
ing from 3 years 2 months to 5 years 7 months (M = 4.96, SD = .51). Adults were recruited
from a swim school associated with the experimenter, and from introductory psychol-
ogy courses via advertisement on the Macquarie University Psychology Participant Pool.
Adults included 16 females and 16 males ranging from 18  years 1  month to 52  years
3 months (M = 27.08, SD = 12.00). Participants were randomly allocated to one of two con-
ditions: spontaneous gesture (18 adults, 21 children) or instructed gesture (14 adults, 16
children). Adult participants and parents of child participants signed written consent forms
prior to participation in the study.

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Materials and Procedure

Adult participants were seen within a room at Macquarie University or in a quiet corner
of the swim school used to recruit participants. Children were seen in a quiet corner of
their preschool, within view of preschool staff. All participants were presented with a short
video cartoon on an iPad, of Donald Duck trying to refill a watering can to water his prized
watermelons. After watching the cartoon, the participants completed a join-the-dots filler
task. Different join-the-dots tasks were given to children and adults, and time allocated to
complete the task was restricted to 120-s. The experimenter helped children with the join-
the-dots task if they had difficulty.
After completing the filler task, the recording device (a video camera) was presented to
the participant and the experimenter stated, “Now I am going to ask you some questions,
is it okay if I turn the video camera on so that I can remember what you say later?” After
verbal consent was obtained, the video camera was turned on. Participants were then asked
four open-ended questions (See “Appendix A” section) about the content of the cartoon
based on Stevanoni and Salmon (2005), including: “tell me everything that happened in
the video you just saw”; “tell me everything that Donald Duck did in the video”; “tell me
everything Donald Duck saw in the video”, and “is there anything else you can remember
about the video?” If the participant appeared distracted or confused, the questions were
repeated. Participants in the instructed gesture condition were encouraged to use their
hands when answering the questions (e.g., “I’d like you to show me and tell me everything
that happened in the video you just saw. Show me as you tell me using your hands”), while
participants in the spontaneous gesture condition were not instructed to move their hands
(e.g., “tell me everything that happened in the video you just saw”). Although participants
in the spontaneous gesture condition were not explicitly asked to gesture while retelling the
narrative, they were not discouraged from gesturing in any way.

Scoring

Verbal responses were transcribed, and all gestures produced by participants were coded
and categorized by the experimenter. In the first instance, the gestures were coded accord-
ing to their form and which event from the narrative they were depicting. For example,
if a participant made a fist with their left hand and moved it in an up and down motion
while saying, “Donald Duck pumped the lever” the gesture was categorized as a “pump-
ing gesture with one hand”. Alternatively, if the participant made a fist with both hands
and moved them up and down simultaneously while saying. “Donald Duck pumped the
lever” the gesture was categorized as a “pumping gesture with two hands.” Once all ges-
tures had been coded into categories, individual gesture types were summed together to
form a higher-level category based on the event in the narrative that they represented. For
example, all gestures that depicted a pumping motion were summed to form the category
“pumping gesture”, whereas all gestures that represented the shape of a watering can were
summed to make the category “watering can gesture.”

Reliability

A second coder independently coded 20% of adult videos and 20% of child videos to assess
inter-rater reliability for the total number of gestures produced by participants. Intra-class

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correlations (ICC) were obtained to evaluate reliability using an absolute agreement model.
As only the first coder’s scores were used in the final analyses, the single measure ICC is
reported (ICC = .77, p < .0005).

Results and Discussion

Study 1 investigated the type and frequency of iconic gestures that individuals performed
while retelling a narrative. Through coding the gestures performed by participants, we
were able to produce a definition of typical gestures and uncover gestures that may reflect
a biologically primary skill. Typical gestures were determined to be any gesture naturally
produced by participants in study 1. Of the gestures produced, 10 were selected for use in
Study 2 (see Table 1).
The gestures used in Study 2 were produced by at least one participant in Study 1,
were iconic, and reflected a major narrative event. Although some gestures produced in
Study 1 were produced more frequently than some gestures selected for Study 2, they were
excluded, as they reflected beat or deictic gestures. Overall, Study 1 identified iconic ges-
tures that are frequently produced without prompting in response to a narrative.

Study 2

Study 1 identified iconic gestures that were produced frequently without prompting when
recalling a narrative. However, we do not yet know the implications for the use of such
gestures as instructional tools. Do more frequently produced gestures have a greater benefit
for learning than gestures that are seldom produced? Using the typical gestures identified
in Study 1, Study 2 clarified whether typical gestures aid learning to a greater extent than
atypical gestures (i.e., gestures not produced by participants in Study 1, but that could be
used to depict a narrative event). A further aim of Study 2 was to determine whether ges-
tures are more beneficial to adults when a narrative is difficult to comprehend. McNeil
et al. (2000) found gestures were more beneficial to children when accompanied by a spo-
ken message that was difficult to understand. Similar findings are yet to be replicated in
adults.
Participants viewed a video of a narrator telling a story about Donald Duck based on
the cartoon presented in Study 1. The narrated story contained all the main plot points
in the cartoon. Depending on experimental condition, the narrator either performed typi-
cal gestures, atypical gestures, or no gestures at certain points throughout the narrative.
We predicted that participants in both gesture conditions would perform better at recall
than participants in the no-gesture condition, and that participants in the typical gesture
condition would perform better than those in the atypical gesture condition. Furthermore,
we expected that gestures would aid narrative comprehension to a greater extent when the
speech content of the narrative included infrequently used words than when it included
words that are frequently used in conversation. As we have less exposure to low-frequency
words, it is assumed they will be harder to comprehend than words we are frequently
exposed to. Thus, gesture may be more helpful in improving narrative comprehension
when the spoken narrative is harder to understand through inclusion of low-frequency
words.

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Table 1  Frequency, mean, and (standard deviation) of the typical gestures produced by age group and condition
Gesture Child Adult

Instructed Spontaneous Instructed Spontaneous

M Frequency (%) M Frequency M Frequency (%) M Frequency (%)

Pumping 1.13 (1.59) 56.2 .38 (.74) 28.6 5.00 (2.08) 100 3.44 (3.52) 77.8
Bucket burst .13 (.50) 6.3 .24 (.54) 19 2.07 (.92) 100 .72 (.75) 55.6
Picked up .13 (.34) 12.5 .05 (.22) 4.8 2.21 (1.58) 85.7 .61 (.92) 38.9
Into sky .13 (.50) 6.3 .24 (.70) 14.3 1.14 (1.23) 57.1 .33 (.69) 22.2
Bucket moved .13 (.50) 6.3 .00 (.00) 0 .57 (.76) 42.9 .50 (.86) 33.3
Expanded .00 (.00) 0 .00 (.00) 0 .14 (.36) 14.3 .11 (.32) 11.1
First prize .00 (.00) 0 .00 (.00) 0 .07 (.27) 7.1 .11 (.32) 11.1
Water in nose .06 (.25) 6.3 .19 (.68) 9.5 .07 (.27) 7.1 .11 (.32) 11.1
Wobbling .00 (.00) 0 .00 (.00) 0 .14 (.36) 14.3 .10 (.24) 5.6
Squirt in eye .06 (.25) 6.3 .00 (.00) 0 .07 (.27) 7.1 .00 (.00) 0

Standard deviations appear in parentheses

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 J Nonverbal Behav

Method

Participants

One hundred and thirty students were recruited from introductory and cognitive psychol-
ogy courses at Macquarie University via advertisement on the Macquarie University Psy-
chology Participant Pool. The introductory psychology group consisted of 39 students (35
females and 4 males), ranging from 17 years 8 months to 42 years 10 months (M = 19.66,
SD = 4.02). The cognitive psychology group consisted of 91 students (66 females and 25
males), ranging from 18 years 8 months to 52 years 5 months (M = 22.28, SD = 7.03).

Materials and Procedure

The PPVT-4 Form B (PPVT-4; Dunn and Dunn 2007) was used as a measure of partici-
pants’ receptive language vocabulary, an important component of comprehension (Joshi
2005). The primary stimulus was a 2-min visual narrative (See “Appendices B and C”
section), based on the Donald Duck cartoon shown to participants in Study 1. The narra-
tive was told by an adult female unknown to participants and was recorded using a video
camera. The narrator was filmed wearing the same clothes with the same hairstyles in all
conditions to prevent variability. In the typical gesture condition the narrator produced a
series of typical iconic gestures at specific points throughout the narrative (only commonly
used gestures, performed by participants in Study 1, such as using both hands in a pumping
motion to signify Donald Duck pumping a lever). It is notable that there were multiple dif-
ferent kinds of gestures produced without prompting to depict a single event in the cartoon
in Study 1 (e.g., some participants made a pumping motion with one hand while other
participants made the movement with both hands). The gestures selected for use in Study
2 were of the form produced most frequently by participants in Study 1. For example, a
pumping gesture was made more frequently with two hands in Study 1 than a pumping ges-
ture made with one hand, and thus two hands were used in Study 2 to produce the pumping
gesture.
In contrast, in the atypical gesture condition the narrator produced a series of atypical
iconic gestures at specific points throughout the narrative (gestures, which are not com-
monly produced, such as making the shape of a circular rosette ribbon with both hands and
holding it up to represent first prize). These gestures were never produced by participants
in Study 1, but could have been produced in response to watching the narrative. In other
words, these were gestures that accurately reflected the speech content of the narrative, but
while they could have been produced in the absence of instruction, they were at no point
produced by participants in Study 1. Furthermore, it was ensured the atypical gestures took
the same amount of time as the typical gestures, and still semantically depicted the same
point.
Gestures were presented by the narrator at the same point in the narrative for both the
typical and atypical gesture conditions; the only difference between the two conditions
was in the nature of the gestures produced. This was such that the atypical version of the
typical gesture was still produced on the exact same phrase in the narrative as the typi-
cal gesture, for the same amount of time, and both shared the same semantic meaning.
The only difference between typical and atypical gestures was that typical gestures were
produced without prompting during Study 1 while atypical gestures could have been

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produced but were not during Study 1. In each condition, a total of 10 gestures were
produced at specific items in the narrative: participants in the typical condition viewed
10 typical gestures, while participants in the atypical condition viewed 10 atypical ges-
tures. Participants in the no-gesture condition saw no gestures, and the narrator kept a
still body.
The narrative contained 10 phrases that were accompanied by gestures in the typical and
atypical gesture conditions (termed gesture items), and six phrases that were not accom-
panied by gestures in any of the three conditions (termed non-gesture items). In the case
of the no-gesture group, they only received the information about the narrative through
speech, but the gesture items were still asked, as they were simply questions about the same
points in the narrative where typical atypical groups saw gestures. That is, participants did
not have to see the gestures to answer such questions, given that the information presented
through gesture was the same as that given through speech. This allowed for the investi-
gation of whether observing gestures benefits narrative comprehension when presented in
addition to speech, as opposed to when the narrative is presented through speech alone.
The phrases associated with the gesture items and non-gesture items were also manipulated
for word frequency, as outlined below. The narrator gestured on the phrase “water began
spurting out straight into Donald Duck’s eye” in the high-frequency condition and ges-
tured on the phrase “water began spurting out straight into Donald Duck’s oculus” in the
low-frequency condition. However, the narrator did not gesture on the phrase “the water
only dribbled out” in the low-frequency condition or on the phrase “the water only perco-
lated out” in the high-frequency condition. The gestures were therefore produced on the
same phrase regardless of whether it was a low-frequency or high-frequency verbal item.
In addition, the narrative contained 47 non-manipulated phrases that were not manipulated
for gesture or word frequency. These phrases served as a filler to ensure that the narrative
flowed smoothly. In total, the narrative contained 63 phrases.
Each gesture and non-gesture item contained either a high-frequency word used or a
low-frequency word, manipulated within-subjects. High-frequency words were those that
are frequently spoken in the English language (e.g., nostrils), while low-frequency words
were those that are infrequently spoken in the English language (e.g., nares), as determined
by the English Lexicon Project (http://elexi​con.wustl​.edu). Low-frequency words had fre-
quency ratings that were at least half those of the paired frequent word. For example, the
high-frequency word “broke” had an associated frequency rating of 14,085, while the low-
frequency word “disunited,” while having the same meaning as the frequent word broke,
had an associated frequency rating of 36.
The 16 manipulated points were split into eight high-frequency and eight low-frequency
phrases (See “Appendix D” section). Of these 16 phrases, five high-frequency words and
five low-frequency words related to the gesture items, while three high-frequency words
and three low-frequency words related to the non-gesture items. The phrases that con-
tained high-frequency versus low-frequency words presented in the narrative were coun-
terbalanced within each gesture condition. This was such that the narrative viewed by the
participant either followed a high-low frequency order (See “Appendix B” section) or a
low–high frequency order (See “Appendix C” section). For the high-low frequency order,
the first gesture and non-gesture item presented included a high-frequency word while the
second included a low-frequency word, and this pattern continued throughout the narra-
tive. For the low–high frequency order, the first gesture and non-gesture item presented
included a low-frequency word while the second included a high-frequency word, and this
pattern continued throughout the narrative. Gestures were performed on the same words
in all gesture conditions, with gesture and non-gesture items consistent across conditions.

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After viewing the narrative, participants completed the same join-the-dots filler task given
to participants in Study 1.
After completing the join-the-dots task, participants were asked to recall the narrative
(See “Appendix E” section), and were both audio-and visual-recorded during recall. The
experimenter stated, “First, tell me everything that you can remember about the story that
you saw earlier.” Once the free recall question had been answered, the experimenter stated,
“Now I am going to ask you a few more questions about the story that you saw earlier. The
questions I am going to ask will not necessarily be in the same order as what you saw in the
video.” The free recall question always preceded the specific recall questions, to ensure that
the content of the specific recall questions did not prompt the participant to recall certain
aspects of the narrative during free recall.
The specific recall questions were asked in a random order for each participant as deter-
mined by a random number generator (http://www.rando​mizer​.org/form.htm). For each
question if the participant indicated an incorrect response a forced-choice follow up ques-
tion was asked. Questions were repeated if the participant appeared distracted or confused,
and if they did not know the answer they were reminded that guessing was okay. Finally,
participants completed the PPVT-4.

Scoring

Prior to scoring, all speech and gesture content of the interviews was transcribed. Partici-
pant responses that correctly represented the speech content of the narrative were coded
as correct. Participant responses that did not correctly represent the speech content of the
narrative, as well as non-responses to specific questions were coded as incorrect. Correct
and incorrect responses were split into categories. For free recall, correct and incorrect
responses were sorted into the following five categories: high-frequency gesture items,
low-frequency gesture items, high-frequency non-gesture items, low-frequency non-gesture
items, and non-manipulated items. A correct response during free recall was given a score
of 1, with the maximum score being 63, based on the 63 phrases in the narrative. The cat-
egories for specific questions mirrored those for free recall, with the exception that there
were no specific questions on non-manipulated items from the narrative.
The gestures produced by participants during recall were then coded for meaning (i.e.,
whether the gesture represented the correct answer to a specific question) and contrib-
uted to the total recall score, together with any verbal response. If a participant verbally
answered the initial open-ended question correctly, they received a score of 2 and the fol-
low-up forced-choice question was not asked. If the participant did not accurately answer
the open-ended question verbally, but represented the correct response through the use of
gesture (e.g., if the participant stated that Donald Duck used a lever to get more water but
performed a pumping gesture with their hands), they also received a score of 2 and the
follow-up question was not asked. Similarly, if the participant answered the open-ended
question accurately both verbally and through gesture, they received a score of 2.
If a participant incorrectly answered the open-ended question, then the follow-up forced-
choice question was asked. If the follow-up forced choice question was answered correctly
verbally, through the use of gesture, or through a combination of speech and gesture, the
participant received a score of 1. If both the open-ended and follow-up forced-choice ques-
tion were answered incorrectly, the participant received a score of zero for that particu-
lar question. As each question was scored out of 2, participants could receive a maximum

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score of 10 for high-frequency gesture items, 10 for low-frequency gesture items, 6 for
high-frequency non-gesture items, and 6 for low-frequency non-gesture items.

Reliability

A second coder independently coded 20% of the total transcripts in order to assess inter-
rater reliability for all verbal and gestural responses. Intra-class correlations (ICC) were
obtained to evaluate reliability using an absolute agreement model. The single measure
ICC is reported, as only the first coder’s scores were used in the final analyses. For free
recall, ICC = .92, p < .0005, and for the specific follow-up questions, ICC = .98, p < .0005.

Results and Discussion

The effect of gesture condition and word frequency on comprehension of the narrative
was examined for free recall of the gesture items. A 3 (condition; between subjects) × (2)
(word frequency; within subjects) mixed design ANOVA was carried out, with total score
on free recall of gesture items as the dependent variable. As predicted, averaged across
word frequency there was a main effect of gesture condition, F(2, 127) = 4.11, p = .019,
partial η2 = .06 (see Table 2). Free recall of the gesture points was significantly higher for
the typical gesture condition than for the control condition, F(1, 127) = 8.18, p = .005, par-
tial η2 = .06.
Averaged across gesture condition, there was a main effect of word frequency, F(1,
127) = 4.55, p = .035, partial η2 = .04, such that participants performed significantly better
when recalling high-frequency points from the narrative than when recalling low-frequency
points from the narrative. The remaining main effect and interaction were non-significant.
The effect of gesture condition and word frequency on comprehension of gesture items
was examined for the specific questions that related to gesture items in the narrative. A 3
(condition) × (2) (word frequency) mixed design ANOVA was carried out, with total score
on questions relating to gesture items as the dependent variable. Averaged across word
frequency, there was a main effect of gesture condition, F(2, 127) = 8.84, p < .0005, par-
tial η2 = .12 (see Table 2). Recall on gesture items was significantly higher for the typical
gesture condition than for both the control condition, F(1, 127) = 13.79, p < .0005, partial
η2 = .18, and the atypical gesture condition, F(1, 127) = 12.67, p = .001, partial η2 = .17.
Averaged across condition, the results showed a main effect of word frequency, F(1,
127) = 5.55, p = .020, partial η2 = .04, such that participants performed significantly better

Table 2  Low and high-frequency mean (and standard deviation) free recall and gesture item scores on ges-
ture items by condition
Word frequency Gesture condition
Typical Atypical Control

Free recall High-frequency 1.68 (1.22) 1.32 (1.05) 1.14 (1.10)

Low-frequency 1.30 (.95) 1.23 (1.03) .86 (.87)
Gesture items High-frequency 6.95 (1.99) 5.95 (1.93) 6.43 (2.07)
Low-frequency 6.77 (1.96) 5.66 (2.13) 5.07 (2.10)

Standard deviations appear in parentheses

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when recalling high-frequency points from the narrative than when recalling low-frequency
points from the narrative. The interaction was not significant.
Participants learned more from typical than atypical gestures, suggesting the two types
of gestures differ qualitatively, with correspondingly different effects on learning. Study 2
provides evidence that typical, frequently produced iconic gestures are more beneficial to
narrative comprehension than atypical, infrequently produced iconic gestures. In contrast,
there was no significant difference in recall between the atypical gesture and control condi-
tions, suggesting that observing atypical gestures is no better than observing no gestures at
all.
While there is much discussion of the benefits of observing iconic gestures in the litera-
ture (e.g., Macoun and Sweller 2016; McNeil et al. 2000), this is the first study to exam-
ine whether certain iconic hand gestures are more beneficial to narrative comprehension
than others. Study 2 thus suggests that if appropriate typical and atypical gestures can be
defined, such gestures may have differential effects on other aspects of learning, such as
problem solving.

General Discussion

Researchers frequently treat iconic gestures as a homogenous group. However, we now

have good evidence suggesting that iconic gestures are not necessarily equivalent—there
may be subtypes within iconic gestures that have differential impacts on learning. These
results have important implications for gesture research: if participants are to observe ges-
tures, simply stating that they viewed iconic gestures is insufficient.
Through observing the gestures that children and adults produced while retelling a nar-
rative, Study 1 allowed us to identify frequently occurring iconic gestures that may be more
beneficial to learning than iconic gestures that are seldom produced. In Study 2 the effects
of these typical iconic gestures on narrative comprehension were compared with the effects
of atypical gestures. Participants who observed typical gestures performed significantly
better than participants who observed atypical gestures or no gestures. These results not
only suggest that typical gestures benefit narrative comprehension to a greater extent than
atypical gestures, but also that there are different subtypes of gestures that have differential
impacts on learning within the category of iconic gestures.
It is likely, however, that atypical gestures represented a unique situation in Study 2.
During an everyday conversation, for example, a speaker might use the occasional unex-
pected novel gesture, but would be unlikely to use them consistently in the one conversa-
tion. It could also be possible that the atypical gestures do not represent the actions as well
as the typical ones do. If so, it could be that there is a difference in the semantic relatedness
of the gestures in relation to the content of associated speech, and not just typicality. This
is such that it is possible that typical gestures are more beneficial than atypical gestures as
they are more semantically related to the accompanying speech and are therefore processed
at a deeper level than atypical gestures leading to greater recall (Woodall and Folger 1981).
The difference found could also be related to cognitive load, with typical gestures
placing a lower load on one’s working memory capacity than atypical gestures. Cogni-
tive Load Theory (CLT) emphasises how information should be presented to learners
in order to foster learning, noting that the number of elements that have to be simulta-
neously processed by a learner’s working memory reflects the complexity of the task
at hand (Castro-Alonso et  al. 2014; Marcus et  al. 2013; Sweller et  al. 1998). When a

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learner’s working memory capacity is surpassed by the cognitive load of a given task,
the ability to learn decreases. It is possible that viewing atypical gestures was more
demanding, subsequently increasing the load placed on working memory and conse-
quently making it harder for participants to comprehend the given narrative. However, in
the absence of any direct measures of cognitive load the above studies cannot determine
whether this was indeed the case, providing an avenue for future research to explore.
It is notable that an interaction between word-frequency and condition was predicted,
such that the difference between recall of low-frequency and high-frequency points in
the narrative would be smaller for the gesture conditions compared to the control condi-
tion, and smaller again for the typical gesture condition compared to the atypical ges-
ture condition. However, the interaction between word-frequency and condition was not
significant either for free recall or for the specific follow-up questions. It is possible that
this lack of an interaction effect was due to the nature of the word-frequency manipula-
tion employed in Study 2. Given a low-frequency word is simply one that a learner is
less familiar with it may not have been an adequate way of increasing the overall com-
plexity of the narrative enough for the gestures to differentially take effect. In future,
other methods of increasing task complexity could be explored such as through increas-
ing the cognitive load placed on working memory while watching the narrative through
having participants complete a secondary task. Such a manipulation could make the nar-
rative complex enough that the gestures have the potential to be more beneficial than
when a low-load is placed on working memory.
Regardless, it could be that the conflicting results of past research investigating the
beneficial role of iconic gestures in learning stems from the kind of iconic gestures cho-
sen for a given study. As a result, the results of the above studies have implications
for future experimental designs. For example, when choosing gestures to accompany a
comprehension task, care should be taken to articulate how the gestures were designed
and whether they reflect typical gestures produced by speakers. Furthermore, the results
of the abovementioned studies open the door for addressing questions about clinical
populations, such as those with Autism Spectrum Disorder or other developmental dis-
abilities, and whether their gesture production deviates from the norm or whether their
ability to understand typical gestures better than atypical might also deviate.
Through the above studies, we investigated the effect of observing two forms of
iconic hand gestures on narrative comprehension. While typical gestures were beneficial
to narrative comprehension, atypical gestures were not beneficial on any measures of
recall. These results suggest that not all gestures are equal: those we produce frequently
are of the greatest benefit, while other, less frequently occurring gestures may be no bet-
ter than viewing no gestures at all. While research has previously split gestures into cat-
egories such as iconic, deictic, metaphoric, and beat gestures and noted the benefits of
each for learning, this study is the first to distinguish between iconic gestures that may
be produced frequently without prompting by speakers, and gestures that are seldom
produced in the absence of instruction.

Acknowledgements  Warmest thanks to Laura Eason for narration of the task, and to Alessandra Teunisse
and Elizabeth Austin for double-coding the data. This research did not receive any specific grant from fund-
ing agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Authors’ Contribution  Nicole Dargue and Naomi Sweller were jointly involved in conceptualising the
design of the abovementioned studies. Nicole carried out all data collection and analysis. Both authors
approve of the final manuscript.

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Compliance with Ethical Standards 

Conflict of interest  The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights  All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in
accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the
1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Furthermore, informed
consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Appendix A: Study 1 Interview Script

Now I’m going to ask you a few questions about the video you saw earlier. I want you to
try to remember as much as you can about it.

Spontaneous Gesture Condition

1. Tell me everything that happened in the video that you just saw.
2. Tell me everything Donald duck did in the video.
3. Tell me everything Donald duck saw in the video.
4. Is there anything else you can remember about the video?

Instructed Gesture Condition

1. Show me and tell me everything that happened in the video that you just saw. Show me
as you tell me using your hands.
2. Show me and tell me everything Donald duck did in the video. Show me as you tell me
using your hands.
3. Show me and tell me everything Donald duck saw in the video. Show me as you tell me
using your hands.
4. Is there anything else you can remember about the video?

Appendix B: Study 2 Narrative Gesture and Non‑gesture Points

(High‑Low Version)

Gesture points are in bold; Non-gesture points are in italics.

Donald’s Garden

Donald Duck had a garden full of watermelons and one of them had won first prize at a
local fair. While watering his garden, Donald Duck noticed that he had run out of water, so
he skipped over to a water station to refill his bucket.
When Donald Duck first siphoned water out using the lever, the water did not fill up
the bucket because the water only percolated out. When Donald Duck tried to use the lever
again, the water came out too far. This frustrated Donald because he could not seem to fill
up his bucket with water.

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After using the lever again, the water finally went into the bucket. However, the water
kept emanating out of the water station and pushed the bucket over to a ledge, where it
began to tilt back and forth. Donald rushed over to the ledge to try and stop the bucket
from falling, but it was too late. The bucket had fallen off the ledge, spilling all of the water
onto the ground.
Donald Duck hoisted up the bucket and took it back to the water station. This time,
Donald Duck moved the lever up and down so fast that the water station began to expand
but only a drop of water came out. Donald duck looked into the tap to see why the water
was not coming out, and all of a sudden, water began spurting out straight into Donald
duck’s oculus.
Donald Duck then moved the lever up and down as fast as it could go. A stream of water
spurted out, but it kept moving back and forth out of Donald Duck’s reach as he chased
it with his bucket. He continued to chase the water all the way back to the water station, but
he ran so fast that his nose got stuck in the nozzle and water burst out of his nares. Donald
Duck slammed the bucket down in front of the water station and moved the lever up and
down once more. The pressure in the water station built up so much that water came blast-
ing out which caused Donald Duck to get pushed up.
When Donald Duck landed back on the ground he noticed that his bucket had been filled
up with water. As he went to get it, the bucket disunited, leaving the water sitting there in
the shape of a bucket. Donald Duck watched as the water burst. He looked down at the pud-
dle quacking angrily, and watched as the water slowly evanesced into a hole in the ground.

Appendix C: Study 2 Narrative Gesture and Non‑gesture Points (Low–

High Version)

Gesture points are in bold; Non-gesture points are in italics.

Donald’s Garden

Donald Duck had a garden full of watermelons and one of them had won the highest lau‑
rel at a local fair. While watering his garden, Donald Duck noticed that he had run out of
water, so he capered over to a water station to refill his bucket.
When Donald Duck first pumped water out using the lever, the water did not fill up
the bucket because the water only dribbled out. When Donald Duck tried to use the lever
again, the water came out too far. This embittered Donald because he could not seem to fill
up his bucket with water.
After using the lever again, the water finally went into the bucket. However, the water
kept spurting out of the water station and pushed the bucket over to a ledge, where it began
to teeter back and forth. Donald rushed over to the ledge to try and stop the bucket from
falling, but it was too late. The bucket had fallen off the ledge, spilling all of the water onto
the ground.
Donald Duck picked up the bucket and took it back to the water station. This time,
Donald Duck moved the lever up and down so fast that the water station began to distend
but only a drop of water came out. Donald duck looked into the tap to see why the water
was not coming out, and all of a sudden, water began spurting out straight into Donald
duck’s eye.

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 J Nonverbal Behav

Donald Duck then moved the lever up and down as fast as it could go. A stream of water
spurted out, but it kept vacillating back and forth out of Donald Duck’s reach as he
chased it with his bucket. He continued to chase the water all the way back to the water
station, but he ran so fast that his snuffer got stuck in the nozzle and water burst out of his
nostrils. Donald Duck slammed the bucket down in front of the water station and moved
the lever up and down once more. The pressure in the water station built up so much that
water came blasting out which caused Donald Duck to get levitated up.
When Donald Duck landed back on the ground he noticed that his bucket had been filled
up with water. As he went to get it, the bucket broke, leaving the water sitting there in the
shape of a bucket. Donald Duck watched as the water burst. He looked down at the puddle
quacking angrily, and watched as the water slowly disappeared into a hole in the ground.

Appendix D: Study 2 High‑Frequency and Low‑Frequency Words

High-frequency words Low-frequency words

First Highest laurel

Pumped Siphoned
Tilt Teeter
Picked up Hoisted up
Expand Distend
Eye Oculus
Moving back and forth Vacillating
Nostrils Nares
Pushed up Levitated
Broke Disunited
Skipped Capered
Dribbled Percolated
Frustrated Embittered
Spurting Emanating
Nose Snuffer
Disappeared Evanesced

Appendix E: Study 2 Interview Script

Now I am going to ask you some questions about the video that you saw on the computer
earlier. If you don’t know the answers you can just guess ok?
Free Recall Question: First, tell me everything you remember about the story you saw earlier.
Now I am going to ask you a few more questions about the video. The questions I am
going to ask won’t necessarily be in the same order as what you saw in the video.
Specific Questions:

1. What caused the bucket to move towards the ledge?

a. Did the water spurt out and push the bucket towards the ledge or did Donald
Duck place the bucket on the ledge?

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2. What happened the first time Donald Duck tried to refill the bucket?
a. Did the water dribble out or go too far the first time Donald Duck tried to refill
the bucket?
3. How did Donald Duck feel when the water wasn’t going into the bucket?
a. Did Donald Duck feel sad or frustrated?
4. What happened to Donald Duck’s beak?
a. Did Donald Duck’s beak get stuck in the water station or did he get squirt by
the water in his beak?
5. Where did the water go in the end?
a. Did the water stay in the bucket or did it disappear into a hole in the ground?
6. How did Donald Duck initially make his way over to the water station?
a. Did Donald Duck skip or run to the water station initially?
7. What place did Donald Duck win at the fair?
a. Did Donald Duck win first prize or runner up?
8. What was Donald Duck doing to get the water into the bucket?
a. Was Donald Duck pumping or turning on a tap to get the water into the bucket?
9. What happened to the bucket when it was on the ledge?
a. Did the bucket wobble or fall straight off the side?
10. What did Donald duck do after the bucket fell over?
a. Did Donald Duck pick up the bucket or leave it on the ground?
11. What happened to the water station when Donald Duck was moving the lever up and
down really fast?
a. Did the water station start to expand or explode when Donald Duck was moving
the lever up and down really fast?
12. Where did the water squirt Donald Duck?
a. Did the water squirt Donald Duck in the eye or in his mouth?
13. What did the water keep doing when Donald Duck kept trying to fill up his bucket?
a. Did the water go into the bucket each time or did the water keep moving back
and forth out of Donald Ducks reach?
14. Where did the water come out of Donald Duck?
a. Did the water burst out of Donald Duck’s nostrils or ears?
15. Where did the water push Donald Duck?
a. Did the water push Donald Duck up into the sky or down to the ground?

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16. What happened to the bucket in the end?

a. Did the bucket break or did Donald Duck use it to go and water his garden?

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