Task effects in Farsi-English bilinguals’ use of gestures

Abstract The primary purpose of this study was to test whether there were task differences (storytelling vs. language learning history) in gesture frequency among Farsi-English bilinguals. Given the importance of visuospatial processing for representational gestures, we predicted that participants would produce more representational gestures when telling a story than when recounting their language learning history (i.e., how they learned English as second language), and no task differences in beat production. A secondary purpose of this study was to test if there were differences in gesture production by language. We predicted that the participants would use more representational and beat gestures in their second language (English) than in Farsi. As predicted, the participants used more representational gestures in story-telling than when talking about their language history in both languages and more beats when speaking English than Farsi. Surprisingly, they used equivalent rates of representational gestures in both languages. We discuss these results in terms of the different functions of representational gestures and beat gestures.