Gestures are a movement of a part of the body, specifically the hands to convey a message or articulate an idea. Gestures are powerful because they can help others understand our thoughts and ideas in a clearer way. This mechanism can be especially useful when the gesture closely resembles the idea that it is trying to convey. Gestures are generously used in our society and are present in many cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, and across all ages. For students, gestures done, either by themselves or by their instructor, can aid in their learning experience. While research in this field is sparse, the importance of this topic does not go unnoticed.
In the article, “Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gestures for Narrative Understanding Through a Visual Attention Mechanism”, Elizabeth Wakefield and Natalia Zielinski are trying to assess whether gestures during speech can help improve comprehension of that speech, and how this compares in bilingual children. In Wakefield’s study, young children, who spoke fluent Polish or English were sampled. The researchers then created a video clip that displayed a person sitting in a chair and telling a story in both the English language and Polish. The individual in the story was seen doing gestures, some that correlated with the story, while others didn’t. The participants were asked to watch the video, and their eye movements were tracked through extensive technology. After watching the clip, they were asked to detail the events of the video. The results of this study showed that reliance on gesture was mainly used by children when the language they were least comfortable with was used. This demonstrates that visual gestures might be useful when explaining a difficult concept since reliance on language is not enough to gain full comprehension.
An article from Scientific American details a study that demonstrates how hand movements can be a useful tool when learning about statistical models. Specifically, the idea that encouraging learners to move in certain ways can help them to learn more effectively. A graduate psychology student, Icy (Yunyi) Zhang, who studies at UCLA, deliberated on the following question: “Where is the boundary on the power of gesture?”. She aimed to answer this question by testing how hand movements done by students can affect their understanding of an abstract concept. In the first of two experiments in this study, 60 undergraduate students watched a brief video that explained a statistical model. Specifically, an equation that helps produce predictions. The video, using only words, explained a set of data using “bars of histograms and models as the means, or averages, of the data” (Hutson). The 60 students were split up into 3 groups. One of them was a control group that solely watched the video. Another group called the “match” group, watched the same video, but with an animation. The animation was played when the narrator was explaining variations in data using histogram bars. During this part of the video, two red vertical bars moved away from each other. The participants in the “match” group were also asked to mimic the movement of the two red bars with their hands. The last experimental condition was a “mismatch” group that also watched the animation, but were asked to move their hands in a different direction than the red bars in the video. The participants watched the video a total of three times and afterward took a short quiz. The “match” group scored the highest with an outcome of 16.3/23, while the “mismatch” group scored 12.3. The score of the control group was in the middle of both these outcomes. This study helped demonstrate the profound effects of movement on learning. Something as simple as gestures can enhance a learner’s ability to grasp a concept.
In Wakefield’s study, the impact of gestures was done by the instructor to determine if it is a useful tactic in learning and comprehension. In her case, she wanted to test if the visual depiction of gestures can aid in learning. Zhang’s study, while it is focused on gestures, is slightly different. In her experiment, she allowed the participants themselves to perform the gestures. Visually assessing the gesture versus performing it activates very different areas of the brain. The mechanisms in the brain behind it are vastly different, suggesting that a variety of methods can be used to assist in learning. Nonetheless, this suggests that gestures are so powerful, that no matter the method, they can be an advantageous tool to allow a deeper understanding of concepts.
References:
Hutson, Matthew. “Students Who Gesture during Learning ‘grasp’ Concepts Better.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 13 Apr. 2021, www.scientificamerican.com/article/students-who-gesture-during-learning-grasp-concepts-better/.
Kang, S., Tversky, B. From hands to minds: Gestures promote understanding. Cogn. Research 1, 4 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-016-0004-9
Zielinski, N., & Wakefield, E. M. (2021, July 19). Language proficiency impacts the benefits of co-speech gesture for narrative understanding through a visual attention mechanism. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63r5d3qq
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