Hands in the air: using ungrounded iconic gestures to teach children conservation of quantity

Abstract

Including gesture in instruction facilitates learning. Why? One possibility is that gesture points out objects in the immediate context and thus helps ground the words learners hear in the world they see. Previous work on gesture's role in instruction has used gestures that either point to or trace paths on objects, thus providing support for this hypothesis. The experiments described here investigated the possibility that gesture helps children learn even when it is not produced in relation to an object but is instead produced "in the air." Children were given instruction in Piagetian conservation problems with or without gesture and with or without concrete objects. The results indicate that children given instruction with speech and gesture learned more about conservation than children given instruction with speech alone, whether or not objects were present during instruction. Gesture in instruction can thus help learners learn even when those gestures do not direct attention to visible objects, suggesting that gesture can do more for learners than simply ground arbitrary, symbolic language in the physical, observable world.

Figure 1

Stills from a video illustrating gesture plus speech instruction in the objects present (top) and objects absent (bottom) conditions. In the middle is the speech that accompanied the gestures; speech was identical in all conditions.

Figure 2

Number of correct answers (left graph) and correct explanations (right graph) children added to their repertoires on the posttest in Experiment 1. Responses are categorized according to whether children received instruction in gesture and speech or speech alone, and according to whether the task objects were visible during instruction.

Figure 3

Proportion of children who added the explanation taught by the experimenter (left graph) and who added correct explanations not taught by the experimenter (right graph) to their spoken repertoires after instruction in Experiment 1. Responses are categorized according to whether the children received instruction in gesture and speech or speech alone, and according to whether the task objects were visible during instruction.

Figure 4

Number of correct answers (left graph) and correct explanations (right graph) children added to their repertoires on the posttest in Experiment 2. Responses are categorized according to whether children received instruction in gesture and speech or speech alone, and according to whether the task objects were visible during instruction

Figure 5

Proportion of children who added the explanation taught by the experimenter (left graph) and who added correct explanations not taught by the experimenter (right graph) to their spoken repertoires after instruction in Experiment 2. Responses are categorized according to whether the children received instruction in gesture and speech or speech alone, and according to whether the task objects were visible during instruction.

Figure 6

Proportion of children who added the explanation taught by the experimenter (left graph) and who added correct explanations not taught by the experimenter (right graph) to their spoken repertoires after instruction in Experiment 2, when children are matched for their performance (number of correct explanations) at pretest (N = 9 per condition). Responses are categorized according to whether the children received instruction in gesture and speech or speech alone, and according to whether the task objects were visible during instruction.