Gestures Helping Improve

During a neuroscience seminar, Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield introduced us to her incredible research on gestures and how they help learners to learn better and more efficiently. Similarly, after doing extensive research following up on the topic, professors at the University of Pompeu Fabra University had similar results. Given these two different studies performed, the results still consisted that students/learners who incorporated gestures into their learning, did, in fact, end up learning better and efficiently.

            In Dr. Wakefield’s study, a system used for eye-tracking was able to identify whether the ability to give gestures helped to direct visual attention. Their study helped to find that the students who were presented with the gestures in addition to the speech made by the teacher while they recited math problems, ended up benefiting the children as found in the posttest they had given. This was as opposed to other children in different groups that consisted of speech with no gestures. The study’s theory implied that the gestures allowed the children to follow along with the math problem without having to turn their visual attention to the teacher and can, therefore, shift the focus to the math problem itself more in-depth. However, what the studies of Dr. Wakefield also seem to discover is that the credit of gestures should not be given by itself, but more so of the fact that learning was improved because of the ability to synchronize the gestures WITH the speech! Gestures are looked at as a moderator, and not a mediator.

            In Professor Pilar Prieto’s studies from the University of Pompeu Fabra, they find similar results in that of narrative storytelling with gestures to children around the age of 5-6. More specifically, they find that the rhythm of the gestures used in telling stories helps the kids not just remember the speech and its information, but also helps in understanding what is going on in the story. Similar to the idea of control groups in Dr. Wakefield’s study, each participant was told multiple stories. Some had rhythmic gestures that were used with keywords in the story, and the other stories did not. When the children’s narrative structure and learning were assessed, they found that when it was time for the children to produce stories themselves, the ones who had learned the stories with the rhythmic gestures were better understood and therefore the production of narrative discourse in the children was better.

            With these two scientific findings, it can be concluded that gestures serve as a benefit and a positive addition to learning. Gestures by itself cannot be solidified as effective and powerful if not presented with an additional stimulus such as speech. Looking at something with just gestures and no speech can be just as troublesome to a learner if they were also to be presented with speech and no gestures. This is what is meant when gestures are seen as a moderator and a nice complementary addition to learning. People can identify their own gestures that will help them remember specific information, such as storytelling or a math problem, like in both studies. The ability for gestures to guide the visual attention of a learner along with synchronizing speech is what makes it maximize its effects.

References:

Wakefield E, Novack MA, Congdon EL, Franconeri S, Goldin-Meadow S. Gesture helps learners learn, but not merely by guiding their visual attention. Dev Sci. 2018;e12664. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12664

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona. (2019, January 17). Telling stories using rhythmic gesture helps children improve their oral skills. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 18, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190117142234.htm