Does visual salience of action affect gesture production?

Past research suggests that speakers gesture more when motor simulations are more strongly activated. We investigate whether simulations of a perceptual nature also influence gesture production. Participants viewed animations of a spider moving with a manner of motion that was either highly salient (n = 29) or less salient (n = 31) and then described each motion event. Speakers in the high-salience condition produced significantly more gestures that depicted manner information. However, they did not produce significantly more gestures overall, more gestures that depicted the spider's path and direction of motion, or more manner descriptions in speech. Moreover, the effect of visual salience on manner gestures persisted after controlling for expression of manner in speech. These findings suggest that speakers selectively produce gestures expressing features of perceptual representations that are highly salient. (PsycINFO Database Record