Learning through gesture
Open accessAbstract
When people talk, they move their hands—they gesture. Although these movements might appear to be meaningless hand waving, in fact they convey substantive information that is not always found in the accompanying speech. As a result, gesture can provide insight into thoughts that speakers have but do not know they have. Even more striking, gesture can mark a speaker as being in transition with respect to a task—learners who are on the verge of making progress on a task routinely produce gestures that convey information that is different from the information conveyed in speech. Gesture can thus be used to predict who will learn. In addition, evidence is mounting that gesture not only presages learning but also can play a role in bringing that learning about. Gesture can cause learning indirectly by influencing the learning environment or directly by influencing learners themselves. We can thus change our minds by moving our hands. WIREs Cogni Sci 2011 2 595–607 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.132 This article is categorized under: Psychology > Learning
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Evidence suggests that when a motoric modality is added to the learning experience, more neural pathways are activated, which results in more learning or memory trace.
“Evidence suggests that when a motoric modality is added to the learning experience, more neural pathways are activated, which results in more learning or memory trace (Broaders et al. 2007;Goldin-Meadow 2011).”
From The Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL): a Theoretical Research-Based Model of Learning in Immersive Virtual Reality (2021) · cites this paper as Goldin-Meadow 2011
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- Authors
- Goldin‐Meadow, S.
- Venue
- WIREs Cognitive Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2011-03
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 595-607
- ISSN
- 1939-5078 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-5086
- PMC
- PMC3813017
- OpenAlex
- W1992903665
- Cited by
- 134
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 0.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Cognitive Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD047450)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Hand Gesture Recognition Systems
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
- Keywords
- gesture, learning, gesture-speech relationship, task transitions, embodied cognition, hand movement, learning environment
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