When speaking, people often move their hands in a way that allows the listener to better visualize and understand an intended message. Because of this, gestures are seen as an extension of spoken ideas. Much research has been done as a result to make sense of the range of influence of gesture on learning and the conveyance of ideas.
Recently, I sat in on a presentation by Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield where she expanded on her research related to gesture, specifically a paper called “Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Narrative Understanding Through a Visual Attention Mechanism”. This project specifically focuses on how paired hand gestures can affect a bilingual child’s ability to pair words in a weaker language to their intended meaning. The study focused on 3 groups, a control with no paired gesture, a group with gestures that did not match the word, and a group where the paired gesture did match the meaning of the word. The study saw that children who learned words with correctly paired gestures had improved memory/learning of words than other groups. Dr. Wakefield also made mention of a study she conducted in which children were tested on their ability to learn math with and without gestures. The study saw that children had improved mathematical learning when shown a video of a woman using her fingers to convey the steps to solve the problems over only having a verbal explanation.
In a similar manner, research has also been done on the influence of gesture on learning ideas/concepts rather than just specific words or formulas. In the research article “Gesture counteracts gender stereotypes conveyed through subtle linguistic cues” conducted by the University of Chicago’s Yihan Qian, Susan Goldin-Meadow, and Lin Bian, gesture was used to test the ability to lower biases of inequality. They utilized different forms of gesture to see how the motions influenced the ways in which children understood ideas regarding gender stereotypes. The experiment saw that when explaining concepts meant to advocate for equality, gestures were more effective in the weakening of gender stereotypes than verbal explanation alone (e.g. using hands to show an equal level when discussing the abilities of boys and girls was more effective than only saying the two groups were equal).
Together, these articles demonstrate the power that gesture holds when grasping new ideas and learning. As seen in the first article, gestures can shape the ways in which children understand simple concepts, such as math equations or vocabulary, while the second article showcases the influence of using gestures to increase understanding of more complex ideas. With this newfound understanding, the use of gestures can be extended farther in educational settings as well as in social justice efforts to instill ideas of equity across various topics, especially in youth. Further research must be done to gain full awareness of the long-term effects of learning complex ideas using gestures to examine whether these concepts remain solidified across adolescence.
References:
• 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.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63r5d3qq
• Qian, Y., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Bian, L. (2025). Gesture counteracts gender stereotypes conveyed through subtle linguistic cues. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 122(4),
https://eastlab.uchicago.edu/files/2025/01/Qian_Goldin-Meadow_Bian2025.pdf
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