Phonological working memory but not beat gestures affect L2 word stress perception

Acquiring second language (L2) prosody, specifically stress, is challenging for learners. While beat gestures reinforce prosodic cues in a native language (L1), their role in L2 stress perception and its interaction with cognitive individual differences is underexplored. This study investigates if beat gestures facilitate L2 stress perception and how this relates to learners’ visuospatial, phonological, and executive working memory (WM). Twenty-four native Dutch speakers completed an L2 Stress Perception Task. Mixed-effects modeling revealed that participants with better phonological WM showed higher stress identification accuracy, corroborating its importance in L2 acquisition. However, no benefit of beat gestures was found for either stress identification accuracy or reaction times. Executive and visuospatial WM showed no main effects, nor did any of the WM components interact with the gesture condition. Our findings highlight the importance of incorporating cognitive individual difference measures, as they may have a greater impact than the gesture effect itself.