Recently I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield present her findings on the impact of visual attention, gestures, and learning outcomes. It was concluded that children have greater learning benefits from speech and gesture cues than adults with established linguistic abilities. Gestures when incorporated into speech direct attention to specific tasks deepen understanding of the speaker's intended goal. This is a demonstration of the importance of multimodal teaching techniques for adolescents as it maintains and directs attention. It is an important insight into how gesture impacts visual attention and learning, but it brings up an interesting question regarding gesture's role in speech and language in addition to learning.
Goldin-Meadow and Alibali (2013) paper on Gesture’s role in speaking, learning, and creating language discusses how gesture contributes to communication skills or production of speech and organization of thoughts. They contend that when a speaker is asked to communicate a dense or difficult topic they often produce more gestures as a way to organize and clearly convey thought (Goldin-Meadow and Alibali 2.1). This is collaborative with Wakefield's finding that gesture not simply an addition to speech but also helps enhance learning and recognition. Goldin-Meadow and Alibali investigated the Information Packaging Hypothesis to test the relationship between gesture and speech. In this study participants were asked to describe shapes in an array of dots ranging from easily outlined to difficult to spot. This was a manipulation of the level of accessibility to the desired information. Participants that needed to describe information in a more difficult packing unit in turn used more gestures to identify the needed information. Similarly in Wakefield's paper it was found that adolescents were more accurately able to describe problem solving techniques when shown with gestures how to solve these problems (Wakefield 7). Gesture is used as a tool in these instances to assist accessing information presented in a difficult manner and enhancing learning. As a speaker, being able to convey ideas effectively is important to the listener. Additionally, the listener having visual cues to connect the speech to those ideas is very beneficial.
I felt that Goldin-Meadow and Alibali's work added on to Wakefield's findings in a meaningful way that explains the relationship between gesture and speech. Wakefield's research focuses on how gesture's direction of visual attention aids in learning while Goldin-Meadow and Alibali explain how gesture allows for clearer organization and communication of thought. Gesture is a helpful organizational tool to supplement speech and should be encouraged. Gestures can be mutually beneficial for the speaker and learning parties as it allows for deeper understanding of what is being said. Both Wakefield and Goldin-Meadow and Alibali's work suggest that gesture is a valuable tool in cognition. As gesture supports visual attention and organization of thought, academic practices would likely benefit from meaningfully integrating gesture into curriculum. Gestures would likely assist students and professors when teaching or learning difficult topics. Gesture has proven to be an important tool and it is very interesting to explore its impact on cognition.
Zielinski, N., & Wakefield, E. M. (2021). 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, 43(43). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63r5d3qq
Goldin-Meadow, S., & Alibali, M. W. (2013). Gesture’s Role in Speaking, Learning, and Creating Language. Annual Review of Psychology, 64(1), 257–283. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143802
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