Learning dialogue with and without movement

Abstract

In two experiments, we investigated the contribution of physical movement to the processing and eventual retrieval of dramatic dialogue by untrained nonactors after they had received only brief procedural coaching. It was found that participants who processed a script by reading the text aloud while simultaneously moving in accordance with a director's instructions retained more material than did those who used verbal communication only or controls who deliberately memorized the same material. Furthermore, when the recall of the participants in the moving condition was analyzed on a speech-by-speech basis, the results showed significantly greater memory for speeches that had been accompanied by movement than for speeches during which the same participant had remained in one place. These findings are discussed in the contexts of embodied cognition and multimodal memory models.