Expressing Our Thoughts with Our Hands

During the 9th week of the semester, Sara Delmar enlightened us with her research regarding how our hand gestures serve as mechanisms for learning. Hands are said to be not only for touch and tactile sensations, but also for sharing our thoughts and even learning new things. Although our hands are just part of our bodies and are used in everyday activities, such as writing, typing on a computer, and drawing. They are just not used for functional movement, but they're functional mechanisms used in various learning techniques, especially for younger children. In a study by Susan Goldin-Meadow and Susan M. Wagner, "How Our Hands Help Us Learn", they discussed how the various relationships between gesture and speech can improve children's learning abilities. Hand gestures convey meaning discretely, whereas speech relies on verbal expressions to communicate (Meadow & Wagner, 2005). The study consisted of children being given two cups of water with different amounts and asked about the differences between the two cups. One child conveyed their answer using verbal delivery and gestures, mismatch style. This resulted in children who used both verbal and nonverbal gestures being able to have the solution at their fingertips. 

In an article by Brendan Bentley and colleagues, "Using Iconic Hand Gestures in Teaching a Year 8 Science Lesson," they discuss how they compared two different science class teaching styles (Standard Method vs. Scripted Hand Gestures) to get more insight into how the use of hand gestures increases not only their learning, but also their memory retention (Bentley, 2023). They conducted the study by administering a pretest to each group (Experimental vs. Control), each including four short-answer questions, immediately followed by a lecture, one using traditional teaching and the other using gestures to communicate the information. Lastly, each group was administered a posttest. The results of the study indicated that the science class that used hand gestures to deliver and communicate the taught information had higher test scores and better memory retention of the class content. Hand gestures are a mechanism that should be used in day-to-day lectures to help not only young children improve their learning and memory, but also in helping people with everyday tasks perform their functions.

When comparing the article with Sarah Delmar's talk, both explain and reinforce the idea that hand gestures are a helpful technique that can help young students perform their daily functional tasks in the classroom and outside it. This technique can help many people, not just those children,  deliver their thoughts verbally and nonverbally. I found it very interesting that people can improve memory retention simply by using their hands, rather than just verbally. Hand gestures are becoming a functional technique for learning and retaining information. 

References

Bentley, B., Walters, K., & Yates, G. C. R. (2023). Using iconic hand gestures in teaching a year 8 science lesson. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 37(3), 496–506. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.4052

Goldinmeadow, S., & Wagner, S. (2005b). How our hands help us learn. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(5), 234–241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.03.006