Dissertation
Exploring the underlying mechanisms of the beneficial effect of gesture on mathematical learning
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2022
DOI: 10.17077/etd.006390
Abstract
Children and adult learners benefit from viewing hand gestures at instruction across domains (Cook, Duffy, & Fenn, 2013; Huang, Kim, & Christianson, 2019; Ping & Goldin-Meadow, 2008). Within the domain of mathematical learning, gesture at instruction has been shown to benefit children and adults in laboratory and classroom settings (Koumoutsakis, Church, Alibali, Singer, & Ayman-Nolley, 2016; Rueckert, Church, Avila, & Trejo, 2017). While gesture is shown to benefit learning, the underlying mechanism by which gesture enhances learning is unknown and, it is unclear to what extent the beneficial effects of gesture generalize. In three experiments, we sought to understand who gesture is most helpful for, whether gesture is more beneficial with less instruction, and what presentation gesture helps with. First, we examined whether individual differences in working memory capacity related to mathematical learning in an enhanced mathematical task, as we aimed to replicate our prior work suggesting visuospatial working memory capacity is specifically important in processing gesture at instruction (Experiment 1). Second, we examined whether the amount of instruction interacts with the presence of gesture (Experiment 2). And third, we examined whether the presentation style of the same mathematical concept interacted with the presence of gesture to explore whether gesture specifically benefits learning when concepts are presented in certain formats (Experiment 3). We found visuospatial working memory to be a reliable predictor of performance, regardless of whether gesture was present or absent at instruction (Experiment 1), we found gesture to not reliably enhance mathematical learning, regardless of how much instruction was provided with or without gesture (Experiment 2), and we found gesture to predict learning when a mathematical concept was presented in a visuospatial format, but not when the same concept was presented in an algebraic format (Experiment 3). Altogether, our results suggest that the beneficial effect of gesture on learning depends more on characteristics of a lesson than previously believed, and that gesture at instruction may not always benefit adult learners.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Exploring the underlying mechanisms of the beneficial effect of gesture on mathematical learning
- Creators
- Mary Aldugom
- Contributors
- Susan Wagner Cook (Advisor)Bob McMurray (Committee Member)Jodie Plumert (Committee Member)Ece Demir Lira (Committee Member)Eliot Hazeltine (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Psychology
- Date degree season
- Spring 2022
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.006390
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xii, 104 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2022 Mary Aldugom
- Language
- English
- Description illustrations
- illustrations (chiefly color), tables, graphs
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references.
- Public Abstract (ETD)
- Children and adult learners benefit from viewing hand gestures when learning math, in both laboratory and classroom settings (Koumoutsakis, Church, Alibali, Singer, & Ayman- Nolley, 2016; Rueckert, Church, Avila, & Trejo, 2017). While gesture is shown to benefit learning, how gesture benefits learning is still unknown, and it is unclear to what extent the beneficial effects of gesture generalize. In three experiments, we sought to understand who gesture is most helpful for, whether gesture is more beneficial with less instruction, and what presentation gesture helps with. First, we found that individual differences in visuospatial working memory did not specifically relate to benefitting from gesture at mathematical instruction (Experiment 1). Second, we found that gesture does not reliably enhance mathematical learning, regardless of how much instruction was provided with or without gesture (Experiment 2). And third, we found gesture to benefit learning when a mathematical concept was presented in a visuospatial format, but not when the same mathematical concept was presented in an algebraic format (Experiment 3). Altogether, our results suggest that the beneficial effect of gesture on learning depends more on characteristics of a lesson and the to-be- learned material than previously believed. Gesture at instruction may not always benefit adult learners.
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984271254102771
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