On September 24th, Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield led a discussion that tackled the idea of gesture learning as a functional tool in understanding mathematics. In this study, she sought to understand more about gestures as a mechanism in learning for grade school children. In the study she conducted, she followed the eye movements of the children and studied the effects of gestures related to how a math problem was explained. The gestures were used to guide attention to specific regions of the problem to help the children better comprehend what the set of questions were asking. These children in the gesture led study were also seen to focus more on the problem than on the instructor unlike their counterparts in the control. This led them to better interpret what the instructor was saying and ultimately understand how to do the problem. After the gesture training, they improved in their problem solving on the math equation and were seen explaining how to solve the problem incorporating the newly learned gestures. This properly depicts the benefits of gesture learning when interpreting new materials since the students were able to focus on the problem-solving technique rather than diverting their attention elsewhere.
Similarly in the article “Telling stories using rhythmic gesture helps children improve their oral skills”, we see Ingrid Vilá-Giménez, et al. facilitate a similar study on gesture learning. Instead of trying to learn how it helps with arithmetic, they sought to understand the influence of gestures on narration. This narrative discourse is described as the ability for children to comprehend and rephrase a story given to them. Ingrid Vilá-Giménez, et al. used the idea of rhythmic gesture learning to help in the comprehension and overall structure of the narrative the children relayed about the cartoons.
The authors used a pretest-posttest design to compare the impact of rhythmic gestures on narration. In this study, the researchers took a group of children ages 5-6 and showed them 4 cartoons and then asked them to explain what the cartoons were about. In the pretest, the participants simply watched cartoons and then narrated what they believed to be happening. There was then a training session given that went over different stories but were now being facilitated by a storyteller. The storyteller used a series of rhythmic gestures that put emphasis on keywords in the story through a series of hand and eye movements. A posttest then was done replicating the pretest to see if there was a change in the way that the children explained the story based around the cartoons. The results of this study found that after viewing the rhythmic gestures the children improved on the way that they depicted the story. The structure surrounding their narration had changed and was more fluent the second time around showing better comprehension of the plot in each cartoon. Ingrid Vilá-Giménez, et al. concluded that there are immediate benefits of rhythmic gesture training in comprehension and emulation when it comes to narrated speech production.
In both experiments gestures allowed the children to gain a better comprehension of material to access their potential skillsets. It is seen in both cases that gesture learning helps to promote better understanding and interpretation of new concepts. Both groups of children resembled the behavior that they witnessed in the gesture learning to further their knowledge. It shows that gestures have a greater impact on learning than what was initially assumed of it. Even though gestures can be a very passive action in a conversation, it leads us to interpret information in a way that helps us to promote our cognitive growth.
Work Cited
Telling stories using rhythmic gesture helps children improve their oral skills. (2019, January 17). Retrieved from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190117142234.htm.
Wakefield, E., Novack M.A., Congdon, E.L., Franconeri, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S. Gesture helps learners learn, but not merely by guiding their visual attention. (2018, February 13). Retrieved from: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/13j3ka06799we8d/AACV4ZHAqmmM3iXbYqe8HVTQa/(09.24.19)%20-%20Elizabeth%20Wakefield-Connell/Wakefield%20et%20al.%2C%202018%20copy.pdf?dl=0
Vilà-Giménez, I., Igualada, A., & Prieto, P. (2019). Observing storytellers who use rhythmic beat gestures improves children’s narrative discourse performance. Developmental Psychology, 55(2), 250–262. https://doi-org.flagship.luc.edu/10.1037/dev0000604
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