English/Italian Bilinguals Switch Gesture Parameters when they Switch Languages

English/Italian Bilinguals Switch Gesture Parameters when they Switch Languages Federica Cavicchio (federica.cavicchio@unitn.it) Center for Mind/Brain Science, Corso Bettini 31 Rovereto (Tn), 38068 IT and School of Psychology, University of Birmingham Edgbaston, B15 2TT UK Sotaro Kita (kita.s @bham.ac.uk) School of Psychology, University of Birmingham Edgbaston, B15 2TT UK transfer was found. Nicoladis and colleagues explained their results claiming that bilinguals have more “choices” about how to package verbal messages with respect to monolinguals. Therefore, bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals (see also Pika et al., 2006). On the other hand, a study by So (2010) found gesture transfer between American English and Mandarin Chinese in English- Mandarin bilinguals in Singapore. American English monolinguals gestured significantly more than Mandarin speaking monolinguals. Bilinguals gestured more when speaking Mandarin than the Mandarin monolingual control group, and when speaking English, they gestured at about the same rate as English monolinguals. Another gesture parameter that varies across cultures is gesture size. Since the seminal study of Efron (1941/1972) comparing Jewish and Italian immigrants’ gestures, we know that in different cultures gestures differ in how they are performed in the space. In particular, Efron observed that Italian immigrants’ gestures were spatially expansive, moving the entire arm from the shoulder joint, and tended to occupy the lateral (transversal) plane. More recently, Muller (1998) compared the gesture space of native Spanish and German speakers involved in a naturalistic conversation task with a language matching confederate. She found that Spanish speakers produced more gestures in the space above their shoulder than German speakers. Interestingly, Muller did not find difference in gesture rates between German and Spanish. She suggested that the difference in gesture salience create an ‘illusion’ that Mediterranean region cultures gesture more frequently than north European cultures. Gesture size is an interesting variable to consider for gesture transfer in bilinguals. First, gesture size varies cross- culturally: bigger in Mediterranean cultures than in northern European cultures. Second, gesture size is determined by different psychological processes than gesture rates (Chu, Meyer, Foulkes & Kita, under review). Thus, gestural transfer or lack of transfer for gesture rates and gesture size may shed light on the relationship between speech and gesture production processes. However, no previous studies have investigated gesture size in bilinguals. Because the evidence for transfer of gesture rates in the Abstract We investigated gestural communication in early bilinguals. In particular, we tested which aspects of gestures were “transferred” from a language to another. Though transfer in spoken languages has been studied extensively, transfer in gesture is understudied. Gesture transfer can provide useful information on the cognitive architecture in bilingualism. In this study our focus is on gesture rate and gesture space in Italian/English bilinguals. Contrary to previous findings, we have no evidence of transfer. When bilinguals switch language, their gesture parameters switch accordingly. The switch of gesture (cultural) parameters such as rate and salience show that language and gesture are tightly linked. This suggests that a language and the corresponding gesture parameters might be selected in a high level processing stage at which verbal and nonverbal aspects of communication are planned together. Keywords: bilingualism; gesture rate; gesture space; linguistic transfer; gesture transfer; lexical access. Introduction Different languages and cultures use gestures differently. For example, Italian is reported as a high gesture frequency language (Barzini, 1964; Kendon, 1992, 1995), as opposed to (British) English, described as a low gesture frequency language (Graham and Argyle, 1975). It has been claimed that bilinguals’ gesture use is linked to their proficiency in the two spoken languages. A common measure of gesture use is gesture rate (the number of gestures performed over the number of words uttered). Sherman and Nicoladis (2004) found no differences between bilinguals’ gesture rate when participants have an equal proficiency in both their languages (Canadian English and Spanish, where Spanish is supposed to be a high frequency gesture rate language). Those studies (Nicoladis et al., 1999; Pika, et al., 2006), however, are not very informative about whether or gestural transfer occurs due to the limitation in the design; for example they lack one of the monolingual control groups (see Nicoladis, 2007). The evidence for gestural transfer in the literature is mixed. In a study on English/French bilingual children in Canada Nicoladis and colleagues (2005) found that bilinguals tend to gestures more than both the two monolingual control groups, but no evidence for gestural