From a simplistic “thumbs up” to a presenter expressing with their hands to captivate an audience. Gestures are a common form of communication that either aid in the expression of what an individual is saying, or speaks for itself altogether. Gesture-based learning is a more interactive form of learning than traditional models for education, and involves the use of motor skills and actions when an instructor is teaching content. The teaching of information through motion has been linked to greater success for students in the classroom environment and has proven to strengthen neural activation. Learning through gestures and activities that exercise the student’s motor skills through speech and gesture interactions speaks better to many than the traditional, passive nature of watching the instructor. Many studies in the field of neuroscience are exploring neural correlates of gesture-based learning and its possibilities, both for the neurotypical and neurodivergent mind.
Elizabeth Wakefield et al.’s paper titled Learning math by hand: The neural effects of gesture-based instruction in 8-year-old children explores the effects of combining speech and gesture learning on mathematical equivalence problem understanding and retention. The study consisted of 2 groups of children learning mathematical equivalence problems, with 1 group learning via gesture and speech, and the other group learning just through speech (Wakefield et al., 2019). Academic literature in neuroscience currently has acknowledged and proven the benefits of incorporating gestures into the learning process but little is known about the underlying mechanisms and neural correlates of this form of learning. Further, since gestures are a motor function, they hypothesized that there would be more activation in the frontal/parietal areas of the brain (Wakefield et al., 2019). For experimentation, the children in each group (i.e. speech+gesture or just speech) were taught how to solve mathematical equivalence problems using the method prescribed to their group, before then entering the fMRI machine. In the fMRI machine the children would each solve a couple of mathematical equivalence problems while neuroimaging technology would scan the areas of activation in their brain. The results of the experiment yielded that the group of children who learned how to solve the mathematical problems through gestures and speech had greater activation bilaterally in the parietal and frontal lobes than the other group of children who learned strictly through speech (Wakefield et al., 2019). This illustrates that the motor areas were stimulated during the retrieval of information, if gesture-based learning had been implemented along with speech, even though they weren’t performing those gestures in the fMRI machine. The recruitment of motor areas during the learning process led to these same areas activated during retrieval, thus demonstrating the capabilities of gesture-based learning to strengthen neural activation and improve academic performance.
In another article about gesture-based learning titled Altered integration of speech and gesture in children with autism spectrum disorders, Amy L. Hubbard et al. studies the presence of gesture during speech and its impact on comprehension and learning in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compared to neurotypical children. The study consists of 13 high-functioning (HF) children with ASD and 13 typically developing (TD) children who watched a total of 18 videos while in the MRI scanner and instructed that they would be given a test over the content of the videos at the end (Hubbard et al., 2012). The videos were of a speaker, whose face is hidden to participants, that is discussing 2 topics at once (i.e. teaching surfing and building houses) and would be either speaking with gestures, only gesturing, or only speaking (Hubbard et al., 2012). Upon experimentation and fMRI neuroimaging, Amy Hubbard et al. found that in both the TD and ASD groups there was increased activation in visual areas during videos of speaking and gesturing compared to videos of speaking alone and no movement. As per the differences between the TD and ASD groups, the TD children showed increased activity in STG/S when viewing co-speech gestures, while ASD children did not (Hubbard et al., 2012). Along with that, Hubbard et al. (2012) found that children with ASD showed significantly greater activity than the TD children within visual areas during the processing of co-speech gestures. Furthermore, these findings suggest that children with ASD don’t benefit as much from co-speech gestures, compared to TD children, which could be attributed to deficits in multisensory integration abilities, or in other words, difficulties in integrating information from various sensory modalities at once during social communication..
Wakefield et al.’s study on gesture-based learning displays a lot of promise for the benefits of including gestures into the classroom environment to improve overall comprehension, learning, and memory of the material. My inclusion of Hubbard et al.’s study is not only due to the topic similarity, but also because it highlights the implementation of the gesture-based learning technique for both neurotypical and neurodivergent populations. Hubbard et al. found that, although co-speech gesturing proves effective for neurotypical children, this technique is not as efficacious for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). I believe that there is much more to be studied when it comes to effective learning techniques for children on the spectrum and that this is something to be considered when instructors are trying to decide how to present material to their students. Furthermore, both Wakefield et al. and Hubbard et al. provide evidence that gesture-based learning is a useful tool in the classroom, but more importantly call for more research on alternative learning methods for every kind of brain.
References:
Hubbard, A., McNealy, K., Scott‐Van Zeeland, A., Callan, D., Bookheimer, S. and Dapretto, M., 2012. Altered integration of speech and gesture in children with autism spectrum disorders. Brain and Behavior, 2(5), pp.606-619.
Wakefield, E., Congdon, E., Novack, M., Goldin-Meadow, S. and James, K., 2019. Learning math by hand: The neural effects of gesture-based instruction in 8-year-old children. [online] Available at: <https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-019-01755-y> [Accessed 4 May 2022].
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