Abstract
Gestures are produced for listeners to decode message and for speakers to encode information. Bilinguals need more encoding work in their second language (L2) than in their first language (L1). To examine the role of gesture production in an animation narration task in L2, we measured the brain activity of Chinese-Japanese bilinguals using near-infrared spectroscopy. The average change in the concentration of oxy-Hb was calculated for the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) for three 2s-measurement periods: a pre-gesture, a gesture production, and a post-gesture one. We obtained a significant interaction between the two areas and the three periods. The activation in the left IFG significantly increased throughout the three periods, but decreased marginally in the left IPL. The present results suggest that gesture production is closely related to two functions of story planning in the left IFG and storytelling in the left IPL.
