Make Gestures to Learn: Reproducing Gestures Improves the Learning of Anatomical Knowledge More than Just Seeing Gestures

Abstract

Manual gestures can facilitate problem solving but also language or conceptual learning. Both seeing and making the gestures during learning seem to be beneficial. However, the stronger activation of the motor system in the second case should provide supplementary cues to consolidate and re-enact the mental traces created during learning. We tested this hypothesis in the context of anatomy learning by naïve adult participants. Anatomy is a challenging topic to learn and is of specific interest for research on embodied learning, as the learning content can be directly linked to learners' body. Two groups of participants were asked to look at a video lecture on the forearm anatomy. The video included a model making gestures related to the content of the lecture. Both groups see the gestures but only one also imitate the model. Tests of knowledge were run just after learning and few days later. The results revealed that imitating gestures improves the recall of structures names and their localization on a diagram. This effect was however significant only in long-term assessments. This suggests that: (1) the integration of motor actions and knowledge may require sleep; (2) a specific activation of the motor system during learning may improve the consolidation and/or the retrieval of memories.

Teaching Approaches to Learn Theoretical Contents in Physical Education: A Study about Contour Lines

“…On the other hand, these data also coincide with the proposals that suggest that seeing gestures, and repeating them, support these abstraction processes [17,35]. They also align well with the results from Jaeger et al [36], which showed that the instructional approaches that provide grounding activities in embodied experience facilitate learning in science; and with those from Cecchini and Carriedo [37], who suggested that the integration of physical activity into other subjects, such as mathematics, could contribute to increased learning in both areas.…”

“…At this point, from an educational point of view, it seems relevant to emphasize that the model described by Atit et al [ 13 ] is not strange in a school context. First, the benefits of the use of gestures in the teaching-learning processes have been widely documented in Cognitive and Educational Psychology [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Second, its principles are in line with the principles of movement pedagogy, which is characterized by the recognition and use of the body and movement as fundamental axes of learning [ 20 ].…”

Speech Production and Perception

“…Delayed testing examines slow mapping, the retention of meaning and label association in memory when the "child forms a robust and more sophisticated lexical representation of the word (Carey, 2010;Horst, Parsons, & Byron, 2011)" (Lüke & Ritterfeld, 2014, p. 204). It is possible that a gestural effect could appear both at the stages of fast and slow mapping or only after some time as observed in other learning tasks (e.g., Cook, Mitchell, & Goldin-Meadow, 2008;Cherdieu et al, 2017).…”

When High Fidelity Matters

“…We were also expecting that the learning of the 3D object would have positive effect on the VMRT scores (the VMRT score improves between the pre and post tests). According to Cherdieu et al [9], the effect of the technique may be clearer on day 2 than day 1, in particular for the recognition.…”