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How does gesturing help children learn? Gesturing might encourage children to extract meaning implicit in their hand movements. If so, children should be sensitive to the particular movements they produce and learn accordingly. Alternatively, all that may matter is that children move their hands. If so, they should learn regardless of which movements they produce. To investigate these alternatives, we manipulated gesturing during a math lesson. We found that children required to produce correct gestures learned more than children required to produce partially correct gestures, who learned more than children required to produce no gestures. This effect was mediated by whether children took information conveyed solely in their gestures and added it to their speech. The findings suggest that body movements are involved not only in processing old ideas, but also in creating new ones. We may be able to lay foundations f or new knowledge simply by telling learners how to move their hands.

Children who observe gesture while learning mathematics perform better than children who do not, when tested immediately after training. How does observing gesture influence learning over time? Children (n = 184, ages 7–10) were instructed with a videotaped lesson on mathematical equivalence and tested immediately after training and 24 hr later. The lesson either included speech and gesture or only speech. Children who saw gesture performed better overall and performance improved after 24 hr. Children who only heard speech did not improve after the delay. The gesture group also showed stronger transfer to different problem types. These findings suggest that gesture enhances learning of abstract concepts and affects how learning is consolidated over time.

The Action-sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) is a well-known demonstration of the role of motor activity in the comprehension of language. Participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences by producing movements toward the body or away from the body. The ACE is the finding that movements are faster when the direction of the movement (e.g., toward ) matches the direction of the action in the to-be-judged sentence (e.g., Art gave you the pen describes action toward you). We report on a pre-registered, multi-lab replication of one version of the ACE. The results show that none of the 18 labs involved in the study observed a reliable ACE, and that the meta-analytic estimate of the size of the ACE was essentially zero.

Background Characteristics of both teachers and learners influence mathematical learning. For example, when teachers use hand gestures to support instruction, students learn more than others who learn the same concept with only speech, and students with higher working memory capacity (WMC) learn more rapidly than those with lower WMC. One hypothesis for the effect of gesture on math learning is that gestures provide a signal to learners that can reduce demand on working memory resources during learning. However, it is not known what sort of working memory resources support learning with gesture. Gestures are motoric; they co-occur with verbal language and they are perceived visually. Methods In two studies, we investigated the relationship between mathematical learning with or without gesture and individual variation in verbal, visuospatial, and kinesthetic WMC. Students observed a videotaped lesson in a novel mathematical system that either included instruction with both speech and gesture (Study 1) or instruction with only speech (Study 2). After instruction, students solved novel problems in the instructed system and transfer problems in a related system. Finally, students completed verbal, visuospatial, and kinesthetic working memory assessments. Results There was a positive relationship between visuospatial WMC and math learning when gesture was present, but no relationship between visuospatial WMC and math learning when gesture was absent. Rather, when gesture was absent, there was a relationship between verbal WMC and math learning. Conclusion Providing gesture during instruction appears to change the cognitive resources recruited when learning a novel math task.

As reliance on digital communication grows, so does the importance of communicating effectively with text. Yet when communicating with text, benefits from other channels, such as hand gesture, are diminished. Hand gestures support comprehension and disambiguate characteristics of the spoken message by providing information in a visual channel supporting speech. Can emoji (pictures used to supplement text communication) perform similar functions? Here, we ask whether emoji improve comprehension of indirect speech. Indirect speech is ambiguous, and appropriate comprehension depends on the receiver decoding context cues, such as hand gesture. We adapted gesture conditions from prior research (Kelly et al.,  1999 , Experiment 2) to a digital, text-based format, using emoji rather than gestures. Participants interpreted 12 hypothetical text-message exchanges that ended with indirect speech, communicated via text only, text+emoji, or emoji only, in a between-subjects design. Like that previously seen for hand gesture, emoji improved comprehension. Participants were more likely to correctly interpret indirect speech in the emoji-only condition compared with the text+emoji and the text-only conditions, and more likely in the text+emoji condition compared to the text-only condition. Thus, emoji are not mere decoration, but rather are integrated with text to communicate and disambiguate complex messages. Similar to gesture in face-to-face communication, emoji improve comprehension during text-based communication.

Purpose: The aims of the study were to explore responses of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to rich vocabulary instruction and to identify potential factors that contribute to outcomes. Method: Children with DLD participated in a language intervention embedded within a science camp. Using parent and clinician reports, standardized tests, probes, notes, and video, we derived descriptions of seven of the campers who received a vocabulary intervention that incorporated principles of rich instruction. We present them here as a case series. Results: Five cases responded to the intervention with modest gains in Tier 2 science vocabulary and science knowledge. One case demonstrated no response, and another was unable to complete the intervention. The latter two cases presented with triple risks: DLD, executive function deficits, and stressors associated with poverty. In comparison, the best responder also lived in poverty and had DLD, but he had intact executive function, strengths in extant vocabulary, stronger knowledge of science, better engagement in the science and language intervention activities, and was older. Other factors that seemed to contribute to outcomes included the complexity of the word forms and dosage. Conclusions: Translating research on rich instruction to clinical practice is challenging. This case series motivated hypotheses about the nature of the challenge and what to do about it, the primary one being that the modest success of rich vocabulary instruction for children with DLD is not a limitation of the approach itself but rather a reflection of the difficulty of delivering the intervention while tailoring the targets, approach, and dosage to the needs of individual children with DLD.

Hand gesture, a ubiquitous feature of human interaction, facilitates communication. Gesture also facilitates new learning, benefiting speakers and listeners alike. Thus, gestures must impact cognition beyond simply supporting the expression of already-formed ideas. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting the effects of gesture on learning and memory are largely unknown. We hypothesized that gesture's ability to drive new learning is supported by procedural memory and that procedural memory deficits will disrupt gesture production and comprehension. We tested this proposal in patients with intact declarative memory, but impaired procedural memory as a consequence of Parkinson's disease (PD), and healthy comparison participants with intact declarative and procedural memory. In separate experiments, we manipulated the gestures participants saw and produced in a Tower of Hanoi (TOH) paradigm. In the first experiment, participants solved the task either on a physical board, requiring high arching movements to manipulate the discs from peg to peg, or on a computer, requiring only flat, sideways movements of the mouse. When explaining the task, healthy participants with intact procedural memory displayed evidence of their previous experience in their gestures, producing higher, more arching hand gestures after solving on a physical board, and smaller, flatter gestures after solving on a computer. In the second experiment, healthy participants who saw high arching hand gestures in an explanation prior to solving the task subsequently moved the mouse with significantly higher curvature than those who saw smaller, flatter gestures prior to solving the task. These patterns were absent in both gesture production and comprehension experiments in patients with procedural memory impairment. These findings suggest that the procedural memory system supports the ability of gesture to drive new learning.

Gesture is a ubiquitous feature of human communications, yet the function of gesture with respect to speech is not well understood. In this dissertation, I provide evidence that one function of gesture is to help speakers reduce their demand on working memory systems by providing a format for the expression of meaning. Gesture is associated with a reduction in demand on working memory when it compared with similar movements that do not express meaning, and when gestures are produced consciously. Furthermore, this effect occurs primarily in speakers with relatively less working memory capacity. These findings suggest that gesture may be a particularly important representational tool for expressing meaning for individuals having difficulty managing task demands. Possible mechanisms and implications for learning are discussed.