Exploring The Effect of Co-Speech Gesture, Language, and Gesture Reproduction on Memory

         

Over time, gestures have been commonly used in addition to speech in order to aid in communication. It has been shown that co-speech gestures support long-lasting and flexible learning. The 2021 article titled “Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Narrative Understanding Through a Visual Attention Mechanism” discusses the effect of co-speech gesture on communication and furthers the idea that it does, in fact, promote memory recall. The purpose of the article was to explore whether a listener’s proficiency in a particular language affects their ability to recall information that was presented to them through a combination of speech and gesture. The 2017 article titled “Make Gestures to Learn: Reproducing Gestures Improves the Learning of Anatomical Knowledge More than Just Seeing Gestures” expands on the role of co-speech gesture, adding that not only does viewing gestures during learning aid in memory recall, but performing gestures during learning does as well, and perhaps to a greater extent.

In the article, “Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Narrative Understanding Through a Visual Attention Mechanism,” bilingual children were given narratives along with co-speech gesture both in their stronger languages and in their weaker languages. Their ability to attend to gestures while being exposed to narratives in their stronger versus weaker languages was measured. Then, these children were asked to recall the narratives. The results showed that children appeared to learn more from gestures when recalling weaker languages as opposed to stronger languages and that a possible reason for this is greater attention to gesture when processing a language that they are not as familiar with.

Similar to this study, the article “Make Gestures to Learn: Reproducing Gestures Improves the Learning of Anatomical Knowledge More than Just Seeing Gestures” also highlights the ability of viewing a co-speech gesture to enhance learning and memory retention, but it adds another aspect of gesture that greater assists this process: gesture reproduction. In the article, groups of participants were asked to watch a video lecture on the anatomy of a forearm. The model in the video made gestures that were related to the content. One group of participants was asked to both watch and imitate the model as they were taking in and processing the information. The second group of participants, however, was only asked to watch. The results of this study were that imitating gestures did improve participants’ recall of the locations and names of structures in the video, which suggests that activating the motor system during the learning stage of a memory can aid in memory consolidation and retrieval. Interestingly, the only significant results of the study occurred when long-term assessment were made. The article comments on the role of sleep in this process, stating that sleep can improve memory over time, as it allows for a reactivation of memory traces, which is further enhanced when procedural memory is involved. Although the first article did not discuss the role of procedural memory specifically, both articles agree that co-speech gesture enhances learning and memory in general, and that this seems to be more effective in children.

Connecting the findings of both articles, both viewing and mimicking co-speech gestures appears to aid memory recall, and effectiveness of gesture appears to be influenced by language proficiency. Therefore, an implication of both articles could be that proficiency in a particular language might also influence effectiveness of gesture mimicking. It is possible that individuals remember more information when they reproduce a gesture that is used in addition to spoken information in their weaker languages as opposed to their stronger languages. Another implication that ties both articles together is that because co-speech gesture had a greater impact on recall when the narrative was initially presented in the participants’ weaker languages, perhaps the same is true for amount of narrative-related knowledge participants have. A future study could present one group of participants with factual information via co-speech gesture on a topic that they are very knowledgeable about. On the other hand, they could present another group of participants with information on a topic that they are not familiar with. Then, it could be tested whether lack of knowledge on the topic has a similar effect on recall as a narrative being presented in a participant’s weaker language, and whether reproducing a gesture during learning aids this process more than simply viewing it.

Cherdieu, M., et al. (2017). Make gestures to learn: Reproducing gestures improves the learning of anatomical knowledge more than just seeing gestures. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01689.


Zielinski, N., & Wakefield, E. M. (2021). Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Narrative Understanding Though a Visual Attention Mechanism. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 43(43). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63r5d3qq.