Cited by 192Hearing Impairment and CommunicationNeurobiology of Language and BilingualismLanguage, Discourse, Communication Strategies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 56 of the 56 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 51 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Gestures, but not meaningless movements, lighten working memory load when explaining math

Open access
Cook, Susan Wagner, Yip, Terina Kuangyi, Goldin-Meadow, Susan·2012·Language and Cognitive Processes

Abstract

Gesturing is ubiquitous in communication and serves an important function for listeners, who are able to glean meaningful information from the gestures they see. But gesturing also functions for speakers, whose own gestures reduce demands on their working memory. Here we ask whether gesture's beneficial effects on working memory stem from its properties as a rhythmic movement, or as a vehicle for representing meaning. We asked speakers to remember letters while explaining their solutions to math problems and producing varying types of movements. Speakers recalled significantly more letters when producing movements that coordinated with the meaning of the accompanying speech, i.e., when gesturing, than when producing meaningless movements or no movement. The beneficial effects that accrue to speakers when gesturing thus seem to stem not merely from the fact that their hands are moving, but from the fact that their hands are moving in coordination with the content of speech.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

Speakers recalled more letters while explaining math problems when they produced meaningful gestures than when they produced meaningless circular movements or kept still. The working-memory benefit of gesture therefore appears to depend on movement being coordinated with speech meaning, not merely on rhythmic hand movement.

Key findings

  • Participants were more likely to remember the six consonants when gesturing during explanations than when producing meaningless movements (β = −.17, z = 3.23, p < .01) or no movement (β = −.13, z = 2.61, p < .01).
  • The gesture advantage held in a between-subjects analysis limited to each participant’s first condition: meaningless movement β = −.30, z = 1.90, p = .057; no movement β = −.36, z = 2.30, p = .02.
  • Instructed gesturing produced more gestures than spontaneous gesturing in prior work: mean 13 gestures, maximum 88, versus mean 6, maximum 33 in Wagner et al. (2004).
  • Meaningless movement affected verbal production—more words (52.8 vs. 46.9 meaningful, 46.3 no movement) and fewer non-juncture filled pauses (.16 vs. .24 meaningful, .26 no movement)—but these verbal measures did not account for the working-memory benefit.

Methods

  • 115 college students (62 females; mean age = 19.6 years) solved 30 quadratic factoring problems, then held six consonants in memory for 2.5 seconds while explaining their solutions under instructed conditions: meaningful movement/gesture, meaningless circular movement, or no movement.
  • Because pilot testing showed three instruction changes were difficult, each participant completed two of the three conditions, yielding three groups; order was counterbalanced, and problems and memory lists were randomized.
  • Recall of each of the six letters was analyzed with multilevel logistic regression including condition and trial as fixed effects and subject, math problem, and working-memory list as random effects; verbal explanations were also analyzed with multilevel regression.

Limitations

  • The paper states that the gestures produced were primarily deictic and directed at visible entities, so findings might be restricted to gestures that point out objects in the immediate environment, though it cites other work suggesting the benefit may not be limited to such gestures.
  • The paper states that the data do not pinpoint a mechanism for gesture’s working-memory benefit, only narrowing it to mechanisms involving gesture as a vehicle for meaning.
  • Evident from the text: participants were college students performing a specific math-factoring task, gesture was experimentally instructed rather than spontaneous, and each participant completed only two of three conditions, which may limit generalizability and full within-subject comparison.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/01690965.2011.567074

Cites

56 of 56 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

33 Not checked yet · 21 Own result · 17 Own interpretation · 8 No basis given · 5 Own method

Verify all 51 references — free account

Show all 55 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 24
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 5
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
29 of 29
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    All participants come from a population with normally distributed working memory capacities.

    “under the assumption that all participants come from a population with normally distributed working memory capacities”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Giving participants instructions increases demand on working memory.

    “Moreover, giving participants instructions ought to increase demand on working memory, making it less likely to observe a beneficial effect of gesture on working memory and thus working against our hypothesis.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Participants in the Meaningful Movement condition only had to remember to do what one typically does on this task (i.e., gesture).

    “in contrast to participants in the Meaningful Movement condition, who only had to remember to do what one typically does on this task (i.e., gesture).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Trials with more than 33 gestures are clearly responsive to an experimental instruction rather than typical behavior.

    “when speakers were clearly producing behaviors to comply with an experimental instruction rather than simply producing the same behaviors they would have produced without instruction.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Non-juncture filled pauses are a valid measure of lexical access.

    “participants in the Meaningless Movement condition showed a benefit on one measure of lexical access (non-juncture filled pauses)”
    “gestures did not facilitate lexical access (as measured by non-juncture filled pauses)”
5 of 5

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Statistics recomputed

Every reported test result, recomputed from its test statistic and degrees of freedom. A result shows as not adding up only once an independent check has confirmed it.

  • Consistentz = 4.66reported p < .0001 · recomputed p < .001

    “z = 4.66, p < .0001”

  • Consistentz = 3.23reported p < .01 · recomputed p = .001

    “z = 3.23, p < .01”

  • Consistentz = 2.61reported p < .01 · recomputed p = .009

    “z = 2.61, p < .01”

  • Consistentz = 4.84reported p < .0001 · recomputed p < .001

    “z = 4.84, p < .0001”

  • Consistentz = 1.9reported p = .057 · recomputed p = .057

    “z = 1.90, p = .057”

  • Consistentz = 2.3reported p = .02 · recomputed p = .021

    “z = 2.30, p = .02”

  • Consistentz = 2.62reported p < .01 · recomputed p = .009

    “z = 2.62, p < .01”

  • Consistentz = 1.12reported n.s. · recomputed p = .263

    “z = 1.12, ns”

  • Consistentz = 0.77reported n.s. · recomputed p = .441

    “z = 0.77, ns”

  • Consistentz = 5.58reported p < .0001 · recomputed p < .001

    “z = 5.58, p < .0001”

  • Consistentz = 0.32reported n.s. · recomputed p = .749

    “z = 0.32, ns”

  • Consistentz = 1.65reported n.s. · recomputed p = .099

    “z = 1.65, ns”

  • Consistentz = 1.26reported n.s. · recomputed p = .208

    “z = 1.26, ns”

  • Consistentz = 2.01reported p = .044 · recomputed p = .044

    “z = 2.01, p = .044”

  • Consistentz = 1.76reported p = .079 · recomputed p = .078

    “z = 1.76, p = .079”

  • Consistentz = 2.93reported p < .01 · recomputed p = .003

    “z = 2.93, p < .01”

  • Consistentz = 2.7reported p < .01 · recomputed p = .007

    “z = 2.70, p < .01”

17 of 17

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

1 of 1

Citations

Cites

Show all 51 references

Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. Baddeley A., 1986, Working memory
  2. Bellugi U., 1980, Signed and spoken language: Biological constraints on linguistic form
  3. Goldin-Meadow S., 1999, The descent of mind, 155
  4. Klima E. S., 1979, The signs of language

Cited by

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Metadata

Authors
Cook, S. W., Yip, T. K., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
Affiliations
  • University of Iowa (US)
  • University of Chicago (US)
Corresponding author
Cook, Susan Wagner
Venue
Language and Cognitive Processes
Published
2012-05
Volume
27
Issue
4
Pages
594-610
ISSN
  • 0169-0965 (ISSN-L)
  • 1464-0732
OpenAlex
W1980250657
Cited by
192
References
51
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 3
FWCI
10.39
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Language and Cognitive Processes (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 › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Hearing Impairment and Communication
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
Keywords
gesturing, working memory, mathematical problem solving, speech-gesture coordination, letter recall, verbal explanation

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