Adding gesture to spoken instructions makes those instructions more effective. The question
we ask here is why. A group of 49 third and fourth grade children were given instruction in …

Children can express thoughts in gesture that they do not express in speech--they produce
gesture-speech mismatches. Moreover, children who produce mismatches on a given task …

Teachers gesture when they teach, and those gestures do not always convey the same
information as their speech. Gesture thus offers learners a second message. To determine …

Speakers routinely gesture with their hands when they talk, and those gestures often convey
information not found anywhere in their speech. This information is typically not consciously …

Children who observe gesture while learning mathematics perform better than children who
do not, when tested immediately after training. How does observing gesture influence …

Previous research has shown that children benefit from gesturing during math instruction.
We asked whether gesturing promotes learning because it is itself a physical action, or …

How does gesturing help children learn? Gesturing might encourage children to extract
meaning implicit in their hand movements. If so, children should be sensitive to the particular …

Children frequently gesture when they explain what they know, and their gestures
sometimes convey different information than their speech does. In this study, we investigate …

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 …

Children's gestures can reveal important information about their problem-solving strategies.
This study investigated whether the information children express only in gesture is …