Exploring the Effects of Imitating Hand Gestures and Head Nods on L1 and L2 Mandarin Tone Production

This study investigated the impact of metaphoric actions-head nods and hand gestures-in producing Mandarin tones for first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers.

In 2 experiments, participants imitated videos of Mandarin tones produced under 3 conditions: (a) speech alone, (b) speech + head nods, and (c) speech + hand gestures. Fundamental frequency was recorded for both L1 (Experiment 1) and L2 (Experiment 2a) speakers, and the output of the L2 speakers was rated for tonal accuracy by 7 native Mandarin judges (Experiment 2b).

Experiment 1 showed that 12 L1 speakers' fundamental frequency spectral data did not differ among the 3 conditions. In Experiment 2a, the conditions did not affect the production of 24 English speakers for the most part, but there was some evidence that hand gestures helped Tone 4. In Experiment 2b, native Mandarin judges found limited conditional differences in L2 productions, with Tone 3 showing a slight head nods benefit in a subset of "correct" L2 tokens.

Results suggest that metaphoric bodily actions do not influence the lowest levels of L1 speech production in a tonal language and may play a very modest role during preliminary L2 learning.