Using pointing gestures to convey tactical information: investigating the roles of expertise and complexity

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.