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Does gesturing save cognitive resources during a verbal analogies task? Nope. (If anything, the opposite.)
Part of a wave of recent findings suggesting gesture may not be so helpful (for the gesturer) after all. A welcome trend, in my opinion.
1/ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.571109/full
Part of a wave of recent findings suggesting gesture may not be so helpful (for the gesturer) after all. A welcome trend, in my opinion.
1/ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.571109/full
Here’s another recent "null result." Asked whether restricting gesture impairs people's ability to reason & talk about geometry. It doesn't.
Per the authors, the findings suggest that “gestures are a byproduct of reasoning processes..."
2/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095947521830392X
Per the authors, the findings suggest that “gestures are a byproduct of reasoning processes..."
2/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095947521830392X
Another, led by @AliceCravotta, asked whether encouraging people to gesture affects the fluency of their speech, an oft-quoted finding from a few early studies. It did not. (It did affect people's prosody and how long they talked.)
3/ https://pubs.asha.org/doi/abs/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-S-18-0493
3/ https://pubs.asha.org/doi/abs/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-S-18-0493
Also this 2018 study, led by @neonblueneon, on gesture and “mental abacus” (MA). Children using MA often gesture a ton, but when you have them keep their hands still it actually doesn’t disrupt their performance. (Active motor interference does.)
4/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cogs.12527
4/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cogs.12527
Also a bunch of studies recently finding that gesture is only helpful for a subset of participants—e.g., this one on co-thought gesturing while solving the Tower of Hanoi task. Benefit was seen only for folks with lower visual working memory.
5/ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00426-018-1065-9
5/ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00426-018-1065-9
What to conclude from these and others in this vein?
Gesture's helpfulness in reasoning & speaking is probably not nearly as general as sometimes assumed. (Exactly how general remains to be pinned down, of course.)
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Gesture's helpfulness in reasoning & speaking is probably not nearly as general as sometimes assumed. (Exactly how general remains to be pinned down, of course.)
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Not news to folks who have done research on these questions. I suspect many, like me, have overflowing file-drawers of “failed" studies. But more casual observers of the literature don't see those—or didn't, until recently.
Very glad a more accurate picture is emerging!
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Very glad a more accurate picture is emerging!
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The "cognitive camp" of gesture studies has been fixated on the “gesture helps” idea for a decade+. My hope is that, as null results (and “gesture hurts” results) pile up, it can start to broaden focus once again.
So many other interesting facets of gesture to look at!
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So many other interesting facets of gesture to look at!
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