We investigated whether seeing a pointing gesture influences the perceived lexical stress. A pitch contour continuum between the Dutch words "CAnon" ('canon') and "kaNON" ('cannon') was presented along with a pointing gesture during the first or the second syllable. Pointing gestures following natural recordings but not Gaussian functions influenced stress perception (Experiment 1 and 2), especially when auditory context preceded (Experiment 2). This was not replicated in Experiment 3. Natural pointing gestures failed to affect the categorization of a pitch peak timing continuum (Experiment 4). There is thus no convincing evidence that seeing a pointing gesture influences lexical stress perception.This research was supported in part by an Innovational
Research Incentive Scheme Veni grant from the Netherlands
Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded to first
author. The authors thank Lies Cuijpers for her help with the
experiments.peer-reviewe
