@article{TEXTUAL,
      recid = {8921},
      author = {Congdon, Eliza L. and Levine, Susan C.},
      title = {Unlocking the Power of Gesture: Using Movement-Based  Instruction to Improve First Grade Children’s Spatial Unit  Misconceptions},
      journal = {Journal of Intelligence},
      address = {2023-10-13},
      number = {TEXTUAL},
      abstract = {Gestures are hand movements that are produced  simultaneously with spoken language and can supplement it  by representing semantic information, emphasizing important  points, or showing spatial locations and relations.  Gestures’ specific features make them a promising tool to  improve spatial thinking. Yet, there is recent work showing  that not all learners benefit equally from gesture  instruction and that this may be driven, in part, by  children’s difficulty understanding what an instructor’s  gesture is intended to represent. The current study  directly compares instruction with gestures to instruction  with plastic unit chips (Action) in a linear measurement  learning paradigm aimed at teaching children the concept of  spatial units. Some children performed only one type of  movement, and some children performed both:  Action-then-Gesture [AG] or Gesture-then-Action [GA].  Children learned most from the Gesture-then-Action [GA] and  Action only [A] training conditions. After controlling for  initial differences in learning, the gesture-then-action  condition outperformed all three other training conditions  on a transfer task. While gesture is cognitively  challenging for some learners, that challenge may be  desirable—immediately following gesture with a concrete  representation to clarify that gesture’s meaning is an  especially effective way to unlock the power of this  spatial tool and lead to deep, generalizable learning.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/8921},
}