Hand Gestures Help Math Skills, Study Concludes

It’s long been known that movement helps people remember and retrieve information about an event or physical activity associated with action. But psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow’s article, “Gesturing Gives Children New Ideas About Math,” is the first to show that gestures also help create new ideas.

“This study highlights the importance of motor learning even in nonmotor tasks, and suggests that we may be able to lay the foundation for new knowledge just by telling learners how to move their hands,” writes Goldin-Meadow in her article, now appearing in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science.

For the study, some 128 fourth-grade students were given a math equation similar to this: 3+2+8=__+8. None of the students had been successful in solving that type of problem in a pretest.

The students were then randomly divided into three instruction groups. One group was taught the words, “I want to make one side equal to the other side.” A second group was taught the same words along with gestures highlighting a grouping problem-solving strategy. For example, someone used their pointer and index in the shape of a V to highlight the 3+2 part of the math equation and then points to the blank spot in the problem. A third group was taught the words along with gestures highlighting the grouping strategy but focusing attention on the wrong numbers—using their pointer and middle finger in the shape of a V to highlight the 2+8 part of the equation, followed by pointing to the blank spot in the problem. The experimenter demonstrating the gesture did not explain the movement or comment about it.

All of the students were then given the same math lesson. On each problem during the lesson, they were told to repeat the words or words/gestures they had been taught.

After the lesson, students were given a test in which they solved new problems of this type and explained how they reached their answers.

Students who repeated the correct gesture during the lesson solved more problems correctly than students who repeated the partially correct gesture, who, in turn, solved more problems correctly than students who repeated only the words.

The number of problems children solved correctly could be explained by whether they added the grouping strategy to their spoken repertoires after the lesson, Goldin-Meadow says.

Because the experimenter never expressed the grouping strategy in speech during the lesson, and students picked it up on their own as a new idea, the study demonstrates that gesture can help create new concepts in learning.

“The grouping information students incorporated into their post-lesson speech must have come from their own gestures,” Goldin-Meadow says. “Children were thus able to extract information from their own hand movements. This process may be the mechanism by which gesturing influences learning.”

Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology, was joined by Susan Wagner Cook, now Assistant Professor of Psychology a the University of Iowa and University of Chicago research assistant Zachary Mitchell, in writing the article and conducting the research.