To begin, recruit paired participants and use a coin toss to assign roles. One is the speaker, and the other is the interlocutor. Place a table microphone between the speaker and interlocutor for audio recording.
Also place a video camera at a 90-degree angle to the side, ensuring it remains hidden from the participants. Ensure both the speaker and interlocutor are within the view of the video camera and the computer screen remains out of the frame to maintain condition blindness. Use a computer to present an L2 word from the target language orally to the speaker via earphones and visually in one of two formats, either with a representational gesture video of an L1 speaker or as text only.
After a 500-millisecond pause, display the L1 translation of the L2 word to the speaker for 2, 000 milliseconds. Prompt the speaker to teach the L2 word and its meaning to the interlocutor using speech or gesture. Instruct the speaker to press a button when ready to proceed.
Present the next L2 word and continue until all 20 L2 words are covered. Present each L2 word as text, and prompt them to say its L1 translation, or skip the word if they do not recall its translation. The study examined the impact of visibility on gesture production and communication.
It was found that primary speakers made more gestures when interlocutors were visible with significant increases in representational and deictic gestures. No significant difference was noted for beat gestures for the primary speakers. Interlocutors also gestured more when visible to primary speakers, but without statistical significance.
