Abstract
Coach’s speech and pointing gestures are closely related. However, the question of whether the coach’s pointing gestures influence the learning of complex game systems is still unclear. The present study examined the moderating roles of content complexity and expertise level on recall performance, visual attention, and mental effort through the coach’s pointing gestures. One hundred and ninety-two novice and expert basketball players were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions (simple content + no-gesture, simple content + with-gesture, more complex content + no-gesture, or more complex content + with-gesture). The results showed that regardless of the complexity of the content, novices showed significantly better recall performance, better visual search on the static diagrams and lower mental effort in the with-gesture condition than in the no-gesture condition. However, the results showed that experts benefited equally from both conditions (with-gesture and no-gestures) when the content was simple, whereas they benefited more from the condition with-gesture when the content was more complex. The findings and their implications for the design of learning materials are discussed in terms of cognitive load theory.
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We declare that all the authors have made substantial contributions to this paper. In particular: HBC, BZ, and AK contributed to the conception and design of the study, the acquisition of data, the analysis and interpretation of data, and contributed to the drafting the article; HBC and AK contributed to the acquisition and interpretation of data, and revised critically the manuscript for important intellectual content; HBC and BZ revised critically the manuscript for important intellectual content. All the authors gave final approval of the version to be submitted.
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Ben Chikha, H., Zoudji, B. & Khacharem, A. Using pointing gestures to convey tactical information: investigating the roles of expertise and complexity. Psychological Research 87, 2238–2248 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01806-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01806-y