“Why don’t we try counting with our fingers?”
Most of us first began to grasp the metaphysical concept of numbers, addition, and subtraction by counting on our fingers. The use of our fingers for the representation of numbers is advantageous as it helps break down the abstract concept of mathematics into an accessible form for children. Similarly, in her research article “What Makes a Movement a Gesture?” Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield tackles representational movements. Here, Wakefield addresses the term “gesture” as hand movements that “reference or represent other movements, objects, or even abstract ideas.” Wakefield also reports that students who learned math concepts with hand gestures understood those math concepts at higher capacities than students who did not. Wakefield is not the first to identify that gestures help facilitate learning; many have identified motor movements as critical tools in the academic setting and pivotal in the understanding of complex concepts.
At the University of Chicago, professor of psychology Sian Beilock, studies how students connect learning through motor movements. Beilock has studied the effects of motor movements in relation to both math and physics (heavily theoretical subject). Beilock consistently found that when students used their bodies while doing mathematical word problems, they were able to understand mathematical notions in greater depth. Rather than getting side tracked by technical terms and unnecessary information in the word problems, the students correctly identify the right answer as opposed to students who didn’t utilize motor movements when solving problems. The same results occurred when dealing with abstract physics concepts. In regards to her findings, Bielick expresses “We understand language in a richer, fuller way if we can connect it to the actions we perform,” further citing evidence that the structure and functioning of our brains are manipulated through hand movements. In fact, the corpus callosum-the brain structure that links neural connections between the right and left hemisphere-becomes stronger and quicker as we increase our hand movements subsequently increasing communication.
The corpus callosum is not the only brain structure that’s impacted by hand movements. Scientists know that both the Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area are brain regions responsible for understanding language and producing language. However, very interestingly, subjects who are deaf experienced trouble communicating and often made mistakes when signing after they experienced damage to the aforementioned brain regions. This further supports the idea that motor movements allow us to understand language in a richer and fuller context. Evidence of neural activity in the Broca area and Wernicke area when signing is occurring can be observed through neuroimaging. Scientists observe the activation of both regions as deaf signers process sign language and actively sign themselves. These regions of the brain depict neural activity as if the deaf subjects can literally hear. Thus, it is important to recognize that these hand movements, or “representational gestures,” are a language themselves, activating the same regions spoken language activate. Speech and hearing are no longer the only two aspects of language, but rather gestures add another dimension to language as we observe them being processed like a spoken language.
References
Novack, M., Wakefield, E., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2016, January). What makes a movement a gesture? Cognition, 146, 339-348. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.10.014
Schwartz, K. (2015, March 26). Why Kids Need to Move, Touch and Experience to Learn ... Retrieved October 19, 2016, from https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/03/26/why-kids-need-to-move-touch-and-experience-to-learn/
Suri, S. (2014, July 25). What sign language teaches us about the brain. Retrieved October 19, 2016, from http://theconversation.com/what-sign-language-teaches-us-about-the-brain-29628
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