All Roads Lead to Rome: Instructors’ Pointing and Depictive Gestures in Video Lectures Promote Learning Through Different Patterns of Attention Allocation

This study focused on how an instructor’s pointing gestures and depictive gestures differentially affected learners’ retention, transfer, and visual attention allocation. Eighty-five Chinese undergraduates were randomly assigned to view one of three video lectures in a laboratory. The videos varied in terms of the instructor’s use of gesture: pointing gestures, depictive gestures, or no gestures. As hypothesized, the results showed better learning performance after the videos that included either pointing gestures or depictive gestures relative to the no gestures video; interestingly, the effect of gestures in video lectures was greater for participants with low and medium prior knowledge. In addition, the type of gesture differentially affected learners’ visual attention allocation: pointing gestures directed attention to the relevant learning content of the PowerPoint slides, and depictive gestures drew learners’ attention to the instructor. The findings have practical implications: instructors are encouraged to use pointing gestures and depictive gestures in video lectures.