The neural mechanisms that underlie the association between gesture and learning are not well understood currently, despite the large body of research dedicated to the relationship between gesture and learning. In the article “Learning math by hand: The neural effects of gesture-based instruction in 8-year-old children”, Wakefield et al. (2019) analyze neurological pathways essential to gesture in education through fMRI scans on 8-year-old children as they learned math utilizing speech and gesture. In the procedure, there were two different groups of children who learned how to solve missing-addend-equivalence problems. The format of the math problems was “a + b + c = __ + a”, and the children in the study had to find the missing value. One group of children was taught speech alone. They were taught the phrase, “I want to make one side equal to the other side”. The second group used speech + gesture and were taught the same phrase, underlining the left side while saying “one side”, and underlining the right side when saying “the other side”. Both groups were given pre-tests and post-tests of the same problems. If the participants were able to solve three out of six problems on the post-test, they went through fMRI scans while solving more problems to find any differences in the neural mechanisms between the speech alone group and the speech + gesture group. It was found that the children had activation in the bilateral superior parietal lobe, the inferior parietal gyrus, and the horizontal intraparietal sulcus. These areas have been previously found to be activated in mathematical calculation. However, the speech + gesture demonstrated much higher activation in areas beyond the parietal lobes, gyri, and sulci. The bilateral post-central gyrus, left pre-central gyrus, left inferior gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus, right insula, and right supramarginal gyrus are all associated with action-based learning, and the speech + gesture group demonstrated activation in these areas. In contrast, the speech alone group did have activation in areas essential to action-based learning.
This experiment reminded me of the article “Rhythm, reading, and sound processing in the brain in preschool children” by Bonacina et al. (2021) due to the similarities in focus on learning. They also had similar methods in terms of testing mathematical or reading ability, concentrating on how different approaches can predict or help facilitate further learning in either subject, and they both conducted neuroimaging on children. In the Bonacina et al. (2021) study, the researchers analyzed the relationship between maintaining a drumming beat with preliteracy skills and frequency-following responses (FFRs) in 150 preschoolers. The children had to replicate drum beats on a conga drum that an experimenter demonstrated for them on their conga drum, which was recorded by a trigger in the drum that sent the information to a computer. They performed two trials and the results were averaged. The children then took phonological awareness, auditory short-term memory, rapid automatized naming of objects and colors, and music perception tests. Then, the FFRs were measured by surface electrodes placed on the skin while the children were presented with four different stimuli, [ba], [ga], [da], and [da]noise. The [da]noise stimuli has a background babble of multiple speakers added at 10 dB less than the [da] stimulus. It was found that preschoolers who did well on the beat synchronization task also did better on all preliteracy measurements and had stronger FFRs in comparison to their peers. The Synchronizers also had higher measures within the FFRs, including response consistency, envelope-encoding precision, and phase-locking consistency.
In the future, it is possible that auditory-motor tasks could serve as an early indicator of a child’s language comprehension and production, while gestures could be implemented in early education to promote mathematical skills. Both of these approaches can benefit the development of problem-solving, reasoning, reading, and writing in children, leading to better educational and vocational outcomes overall.
References
Wakefield, E. M., Congdon, E. L., Novack, M. A., Goldin-Meadow, S., & James, K. H. (2019). Learning math by hand: The neural effects of gesture-based instruction in 8-year-old children. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 81(7), 2343–2353. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-019-01755-y
Bonacina, S., Huang, S., White-Schwoch, T., Krizman, J., Nicol, T., & Kraus, N. (2021). Rhythm, reading, and sound processing in the brain in preschool children. Npj Science of Learning, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-021-00097-5
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