A Hands-On Approach to Learning: Gesture Production During Encoding and its Effect on Narrative Recall

Preschool children's discourse competence in different genres and how it relates to iconic gestures

Based on the linguistic analysis of game explanations and retellings, the paper's goal is to investigate the relation of preschool children's situated discourse competence and iconic gestures in different communicative genres, focussing on reinforcing and supplementary speech-gesture-combinations. To this end, a method was developed to evaluate discourse competence as a context-sensitive and interactively embedded phenomenon. The so-called GLOBE-model was adapted to assess discourse competence in relation to interactive scaffolding. The findings show clear links between the children's competence and their parents' scaffolding. We suggest this to be evidence of a fine-tuned interactive support system. The results also indicate strong relations between higher discourse competence and increased frequency of iconic gestures. This applies in particular to reinforcing gestures. The results are interpreted as a confirmation that the speech-gesture system undergoes systematic changes during early childhood, and that gesturing becomes more iconic - and thus more communicative - when discourse competence is growing.

Gesture production at encoding supports narrative recall

Existing research is inconsistent regarding the effects of gesture production on narrative recall. Most studies have examined the effects of gesture production during a recall phase, not during encoding, and findings regarding gesture's effects are mixed. The present study examined whether producing gestures at encoding could benefit an individual's narrative recall and whether this effect is moderated by verbal memory and spatial ability. This study also investigated whether producing certain types of gesture is most beneficial to recalling details of a narrative. Participants read a narrative aloud while producing their own gestures at pre-specified phrases in the narrative (Instructed Gesture condition), while placing both their hands behind their backs (No Gesture condition) or with no specific instructions regarding gesture (Spontaneous Gesture condition). Participants completed measures of spatial ability and verbal memory. Recall was measured through both free recall, and specific recall questions related to particular phrases in the narrative. Spontaneous gesture production at encoding benefited free recall, while instructed gestures provided the greatest benefit for recall of specific phrases where gesture had been prompted during encoding. Conversely, for recall of specific phrases where gesture had not been prompted during encoding, instructions to either gesture or not gesture suppressed recall for those higher in verbal memory. Finally, producing iconic and deictic gestures provided benefits for narrative recall, whilst beat gestures had no effect. Gestures play an important role in how we encode and subsequently recall information, providing an opportunity to support cognitive capacity.