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Doubting My Doubts; The Case of Gesture and Embodied Cognition
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-02-2025

Doubting My Doubts; The Case of Gesture and Embodied Cognition

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The more time I spend hearing “research-informed educational advice,” the more I worry about the enticing words “research-informed.”

Many MANY people toss around the phrase “research says…”; all too often, even a brief investigation suggests that research really doesn’t say that.

Young girl swinging on a playground swing; a wooden structure behind her

For this reason, I find myself slower to get excited about new “research-based” teaching ideas than many of my colleagues…even colleagues whom I admire, respect, and generally trust.

For instance: lots of scholars are investigating the field of embodied cognition and — more specifically — of using gestures to promote learning.

I’m certainly open to the idea that combining gestures with words and visuals will improve learning. And: I want to know A LOT more about the specifics of this idea:

  • Who is making these gestures? Teachers? Students? Actors in videos?
  • What kind of gestures are they? “Deictic” or”iconic”? Rehearsed or improvised?
  • Does the strategy work well in all disciplines/grades/cultures?

And so forth.

I’d also love to see some straightforwardly convincing research to support the answers to those questions.

So, for instance, I wrote a post about students using gestures to learn about Brownian motion. While the outline of the study made sense to me, it…

… didn’t have a control group,

… chose a topic easily translated into gestures, and

… measured “learning” 2 days later. (Does 2 days count as learning?)

While I’m glad I read the study, and appreciate some of its nuances, I don’t think it’s a slam dunk.

At the same time, I should turn some of my skeptical energy towards myself.

In other words: given all of my doubts, I should also be ready to doubt my own doubts. Maybe the wisdom of the crowd should outweigh my own habitual caution here. Maybe I’m so invested in my skeptic’s persona that I’m subconsciously unwilling to be persuaded…

Enter the Steelman

Because I doubt my doubts, I’m always on the lookout for EXCELLENT research contradicting my outlier point of view. I genuinely WANT to have my errors pointed out to me.

For that reason, I was delighted to find a highly touted study about teaching physics with embodied cognition.

My source here — published by the Educational Endowment Foundation — looks for the very best evidence supporting all sorts of cognitive science-based teaching advice: interleaving, retrieval practice, schemas, and so forth.

Of the 26 studies they found looking at embodied cognition, one stood out for its excellence. (In their rating system, it’s the only only one they rated “high priority.”) If the EEF, and all the wise scholars behind this report, find this study persuasive, it’s likely to be among the best research I can find.

In other words: I’m not analyzing a straw man here. This study is the “steelman.”

Playground Physics

The idea behind this study sounds both sensible and fun. Many of the abstract concepts studied in physics class are acted out quite concretely — that is, they are EMBODIED — when our children get to the playground.

If we could connect abstract classroom physics with embodied playground phyics, that approach could be really helpful.

This study begins with a good idea…and an ENORMOUS sample size. Over 3400 (!) students were in the initial sample; after (unusually high) attrition, that number dropped to about 1300 — roughly 800 in the “playground physics” group, and 500 in the control group.

The researchers wanted to see if the students in the playground group would a) learn more physics, b) feel more engaged, and c) feel more motivated — all compared to the control group.

The special “playground physics” program begins with a training session for the teachers, and includes curricular materials.

Crucially, playground physics also includes a phone app that students use to analyze their own motion:

“Using the app, users record videos of themselves and their friends engaging in physical play, and the app generates graphs of distance traveled, speed, direction, and kinetic and potential energy. As users watch the video, they see graphs of their movement unfolding. Users can pause to examine where they are moving fastest or slowest, where a force is pushing or pulling, and where their kinetic and potential energies are at their highest and lowest points. This is intended to support conversations grounded in the children’s physical experience”

Honestly, the whole experience sound really interesting!

Persistent Doubts

Although I tried to find a Steelman Study to support the case for Team Embodied Cognition, I’m still not persuaded.

I have two substantial concerns:

First:

This study does not measure the benefits of embodied cognition for learning physics.

Instead, it measures the benefits of embodied cognition PLUS cool tech gadgetry for learning physics. In fact, the study is published in a journal that focuses on technology in education.

Yes, the students learned more — but the extra learning could have come from the app (so much fun with video!) or from the embodied cognition (moving is so cool!) or both. We just don’t know.

I am not the only person pointing out this concern. The study’s authors say several times that they don’t know what the “mechanism” is that created additional learning. In other words: they do not claim that the embodiment matter more than the tech — or that it mattered at all. They don’t know.

To be persuaded by research into the use of gestures, I want to see a study that singles out the gestures; it should — in the lingo of research — “isolate the variable.” This one doesn’t.

Second:

When we compare two groups, we want them to be close enough to each other to be good proxies for each other. I’m not sure we can say that for this study.

A) The teachers of Playground Physics received extra PD; the teachers in the control group didn’t. Did the PD itself make the difference? We don’t know.

B) The study used a “business-as-usual control group.” That is: control group teachers just did what they always did. Teachers and students in the Playground Physics group got a Shiny New Thing. Was it the novelty that made the difference? We don’t know.

C) The Playground Physics group spent 15.5 hours studying physics; the control group spent 13.2 hours. The study’s authors write that this difference isn’t “statistically significant.” But — as a classroom teacher — I’m thinking two hours and fifteen minutes of additional practice would be significant, even if it isn’t “significant.” *

Because the study doesn’t isolate the variable (that’s the first concern) and the two groups don’t sufficiently resemble each other (that’s the second concern), I’m still stuck thinking: “this study doesn’t persuade me that embodied cognition is a thing.”

And — as you recall — I looked at this study because a respected group said it’s the best one they found.

TL;DR

I’m still looking for the study that makes the Embodied Cognition approach to teaching persuasive enough for me to recommend it to others.

I haven’t found it yet…but I haven’t given up hope.

By the way: if you know of such a study, please send it my way!

* I spoke with a stats-whisperer friend, who agrees with me that this simply isn’t a reasonable claim.

Margolin, J., Ba, H., Friedman, L. B., Swanlund, A., Dhillon, S., & Liu, F. (2021). Examining the impact of a play-based middle school physics program. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 53(2), 125-139.

Do Gestures Improve Learning? Baby Steps Toward a Conclusion
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-06-2024

Do Gestures Improve Learning? Baby Steps Toward a Conclusion

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The idea that “gestures improve learning” has be increasingly popular in recent years. I first heard about this idea from Dr. Susan Goldin-Meadow at a Learning and the Brain conference back in 2015, and the claim has gotten more emphatic with every passing year.

Drawings of men and women making a variety of hand gestures

This emphasis on gesture — within the broader field of “embodied cognition” — is approaching certainty in the field.

As is so often the case, I myself am less confident than others about many of these claims.

In this post, I want to

  • Explain my concerns about the “gestures promote learning” claims
  • Explore a recent study that pushes back against my concerns, and
  • Highlight the features of that study that support my concerns.

In other words: we’re taking baby steps here. This study that I’ll explain does offer modest support to this claim — and offers some useful specifics.

But it certainly does not make the “gestures promote learning” a slam dunk. And it flatly contradicts some of the most vehement statements you’ll hear when people champion embodied cognition and gestures.

Initial Concerns

I am certainly open to the idea that gestures might promote learning. No, honestly: it could be true!

At the same time, I want to

  • understand the SPECIFICS of that claim, and
  • have confidence in the research that supports them.

These requests feel reasonable to me.

So, specifically:

Who is making the gesture? The teacher? The learner? Both? A video?

Does some kind of learning get more benefit from gestures than others?

For example, I know how I could use a gesture to reinforce the word “hatchet.” (A hatchet gesture is easy to envisage.)

But: how would I make a gesture to help students learn “protagonist” and “antagonist”? Or, “pleistocene”? Or “tradition”?

What if students learn the same gesture in two different classes? Say: the “hatchet” gesture means “hatchet” in my Spanish class but “guillotine” in my history class.

Do gestures help students of all ages? Are there cultural differences?

In other words: what are the rules to govern the creation and use of gestures? And: what research supports each specific component?

Last year, I wrote about a study that starts answering some of these questions. But: we’ve got a long way to go.

Frankly, the questions listed above fit quite nicely under the heading of “boundary conditions”: we need to know the “boundaries” within which teaching suggestions work, and outside of which they don’t. I don’t quite understand why people look vexed when I ask such questions.

A Recent Study Strengthens the Case

Because I have outlier views on this topic, I’m always on the lookout for research that will change my mind.

Recently, I came across a study from 2021 that offers lots of helpful information.

This study does, in fact, give me some increased confidence in the ideas that gestures can help. And, it offers helpful specifics about ways that gestures MIGHT NOT help. That is: it clarifies those boundary conditions.

This research has LOTS of moving parts, so I’ll try to summarize it accurately and briskly.

Twenty-two German adults spent 4 days studying foreign language vocabulary.

Specifically, they learned 90 word pairs: a word in German, and its “translation” in a made-up language called “Vimmi.” (Researchers used made-up words so that the participants’ prior knowledge wouldn’t muddle their results.)

45 of those word pairs were accompanied by a gesture. (The participants saw someone making the gesture; and they also made the gesture themselves.)

The other 45 pairs were accompanied by a drawing of the word; in other words, not a gesture.

This group of non-gesture word pairs gives the researchers a useful comparison point. They can ask not just “did gestures helps participants learn?,” but “did the gestures help compared to the pictures?”

Now things get REALLY interesting.

Researchers then used a fancy gizmo to DISRUPT NEURAL PROCESSING in a part of the brain that coordinates gestures.

Specifically, several days after participants learned the word-pairs, researchers asked participants to recall them out loud. While participants did so, researchers used the (perfectly safe) neuro-scrambler for half of the words; they then faked the neuro-scrambling for the other half of the words. The participants, in other words, didn’t know when the scrambler was on or off.

Let’s add two more cool variables — variables that help answer my pesky questions:

Researchers tested participants five days and five months later. So: they could see how long these effects lasted.

And, they also tested two kinds of words: concrete nouns (“window”) and abstract nouns (“benefaction”).

Based on all these moving pieces, you can see that this study might finally convince me that gestures help — or give us some ideas about boundary conditions.

Yup: (Some) Gestures Help (Some) Learning (Somewhat)

When researchers tested the participants five days later, they found that seeing and producing gestures helped participants learn concrete nouns.

Specifically, the neuro-scrambler (presumably) reduced the neural encoding of the gestures for half of the words. And participants took longer to remember those words than the un-scrambled ones.

The likeliest interpretation: part of the memory of the word pair had been encoded in the motor cortex. When we interfere with that part of the memory, we interfere with the memory overall.

So, even though I’m naturally cautious about such things, I’m comfortable saying:

“This research supports the idea that seeing and making gestures about concrete objects helps learn those words in the short term.”

Baby steps.

Yup: Important Limits Exist

At the same time, you’ve probably noticed the boundary conditions in that statement.

  • The gestures did help participants remember concrete nouns (“window,” “hatchet”); at the same time, participants did not remember abstract nouns (“benefaction”, “protagonist/antagonist”) as smoothy over time. (I should be clear: this statement summarizes a very complex set of findings; others might look at the findings and disagree with that statement.)
  • The gestures did help after 5 days, but not after five months. So: short-term memory got a boost. But long-term memory — not so much.

I should also say that this study design (like ALL study designs) includes some features that require our caution.

  • 22 is not a huge number of participants. I wouldn’t often make big decisions based on such a small group. (Of course, as more and more small studies agree, they might add up to compelling recommendations.)

Also, this study pushes back against one of the more common statements within the broader field of “embodied cognition,” and also in the narrower field of “gestures promote learning.”

“Learning doesn’t just happen in the brain; it happens in the body.“

Now, I spend LOTS of time on this blog warning readers against over-reliance on neuroscience. We spend far too much time saying “ooh, look, BRAIN.” (I think we should focus much more on psychology: the study of the mind.)

This study, however, requires that we take the brain itself seriously. Those brain scramblers, after all, scrambled signals in the motor cortex: a part of the brain. They did not do anything to the arm or the rest of the body.

We can, I think, reasonably say that the learning happened WITH the body. But it didn’t happen IN the body; more precisely, it happened IN the part of the body called “the brain.” The arm didn’t change and learn. The brain changed. The mind learned.

TL; DR

This small study adds to a growing body of research that suggests seeing and making the right kind of gesture can help people learn some things, at least for a few days.

It does not reach grander conclusions than those.

And, it strongly contradicts the idea that “learning happens in the body.” Bodily movements can help help the brain change; but the brain itself changes, and the mind itself learns.

 

A Final Note

This study includes substantially more complicated procedures and calculations than I typically try to summarize on the blog. As a result, reasonable readers might believe I have over-simplified the study and its conclusions; you might even think I have MIS-summarized both.

I have, quite genuinely, tried to do justice to the study and its conclusions. And, I include this link so you can check for yourself.

Mathias, B., Waibel, A., Hartwigsen, G., Sureth, L., Macedonia, M., Mayer, K. M., & von Kriegstein, K. (2021). Motor cortex causally contributes to vocabulary translation following sensorimotor-enriched training. Journal of Neuroscience, 41(41), 8618-8631.

Should Teachers Explain or Demonstrate?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
May-28-2023

Should Teachers Explain or Demonstrate?

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If I were a chess teacher, I would want my newbies to understand …

… how a bishop moves,

… how castling works,

… what checkmate means.

To help them understand, I could…

… show them (“see how this piece moves; now see how that piece moves”)

… tell them (“checkmate is defined as…”).

Both strategies sound plausible. Both probably help, at least a little bit.

Is one better than the other?

Today’s Research

I recently came across a fascinating study that explores this question.

A chess board seen from an angle, with red arrows showing how pieces might move in different combinations

In this research, two strangers met over an online puzzle — sort of a maze with prizes at the end of various paths.

Sometimes, one stranger could EXPLAIN to the other the best strategy to get the most points. (“Get the pink triangles, then the hollow squares, then the green circles.”)

Other times, one stranger could SHOW the other the winning path. (“Watch me go this way, now this way, now this way.”)

Which method worked better, show or tell?

PLOT TWIST.

In this case, the answer depended on the complexity of the puzzle.

For simple puzzles, both methods worked equally well.

For complex puzzles, telling helped more than showing.

I would have been surprised if there were a straightforward answer to the question; I am, therefore, more inclined to believe this “it depends” answer.

Take Two

This result — explaining complexity > showing complexity — prompted the researchers to test a second hypothesis.

In this case, the research details get very tricky, so I won’t go into them. But the basic idea was:

Perhas both words and actions can explain concrete things, but

Perhas words do better than actions at explaining abstract things.

Sure enough, the second experiment supported that hypothesis.

As the researchers say in their first paragraph:

Our findings suggest that language communicates complex concepts by directly transmitting abstract rules. In contrast, demonstrations transmit examples, requiring the learner to infer the rules.

In brief, the more abstract and complex the concept, the more important the words.

Teaching Implications?

Before we rush to reform our teaching, we should notice several key points about this study:

It involved adults working with other adults, and strangers working with strangers.

The participants were not — as far as I know — teachers. That is: they have neither expertise nor training in helping others understand.

The task involved (sort of) solving mazes. I’m an English teacher; my teaching — and perhaps your teaching — doesn’t focus on maze-solving like mental activity.

In other words, because this research differs A LOT from typical classroom work, its findings might not apply precisely to classroom work.

Teaching Implications!!

That said, this study reminds me of an important lesson:

Practice. My. Words.

That is: when I’m explaining a concept to my students for the first time, I should script and rehearse my explanation carefully.

Now, because I’ve been teaching for a few centuries, I’m occasionally tempted to wing.

Yes, “indirect object” is a tricky concept … but I understand it well, and I’ve explained it frequently over the years, and I’m sure I’ll do just fine…

No, wait, stop it. This research reminds me: words really matter for helping students understand abstractions.

I need to get those words just right, and doing so will take time, thought, and concentraction. (Ollie Lovell emphasizes a similar idea when he writes about the importance of “bullet-proof definitions”; for instance, in this book.)

A second point jumps out at me as well.

This study contrasts showing and telling. Of course, most of the time we combine showing and telling.

As I’ve written before, Oliver Caviglioli’s Dual Coding offers a comprehensive, research-informed exploration of this complex blend.

When I think about dual coding, I typically focus on the “showing/drawing” half of the “dual.” This study, however, reminds me that the “telling” part is equally important — and, in the case of highly abstract concepts, might even be more important.

 

In brief, in my chess classroom:

I can simply show my students how bishops move: that’s easy.

But “checkmate” is complex. I should both show and tell — and get the telling just right.

Sumers, T. R., Ho, M. K., Hawkins, R. D., & Griffiths, T. L. (2023). Show or Tell? Exploring when (and why) teaching with language outperforms demonstration. Cognition, 232, 105326.

Teachers’ Gestures Can Help Students Learn
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-05-2021

Teachers’ Gestures Can Help Students Learn

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Over the years, I’ve written about the importance of “embodied cognition.”

In other words: we know with our brains, and we know with and through our bodies.

Scholars such as Dr. Susan Goldin-Meadow and Dr. Sian Beilock have done splendid and helpful work in this field.

Their research suggests that students might learn more when they make the right kind of gesture.

Other scholars have shown that — in online lectures — the right kind of pointing helps too.

What about the teachers‘ gestures? Can we help students learn in the way we use our hands?

Dr. Celeste Pilegard wanted to find out…

Steamboats, East and West

Pilegard invited college students to watch brief video lectures. The topic: the differences between Eastern and Western steamboats. (You think I’m joking. I’m not joking.)

These students watched one of four versions:

In the first version, the teacher’s gestures focused on the surface features of the steamboats themselves (how deep they sit in the water, for instance).

In the second version, the gestures focused on the structure of the lesson (“Now I’m talking about Eastern steamboats, and NOW I’m talking about Western steamboats.”).

Third version: gestures emphasized BOTH surface AND structural features.

Fourth version: a control group saw a video with neutral, content-free gestures.

Did those gestures make a difference for learning?

Pilegard, in fact, measured learning in two ways:

Did the students remember the facts?

Could the students apply those facts by drawing inferences?

So, what did she discover?

No, but Yes

Researchers typically make predictions about their findings.

In this case, Pilegard predicted that neither the surface gestures (about steamboats) nor the structural gestures (about the logic of the lesson) would help students remember facts.

But, she predicted that the structural gestures would help students draw inferences. (“If a steamboat operates on a shallow river, what does that tell you about the pressure of the steamboat’s engine?”) Surface gestures, she predicted, would not improve inferences.

Sure enough, Pilegard was 2 for 2.

Watching gestures didn’t help students remember facts any better. However, students who watched structural gestures (but not surface gestures) did better on inference questions. (Stats types: the Cohen’s d was 0.39; an impressive bonus for such a small intervention.)

When Pilegard repeated the experiment with a video on “innate vs. acquired immunity,” she got the same results.

Implications and Cautions

As teachers, we know that every little bit helps. When we use gestures to reinforce the underlying logical structure of our explanations, doing so might help students learn more.

As we plan, therefore, we should be consciously aware of our lesson’s logical structure, and think a bit about how gestures might reinforce that structure.

At the same time, regular readers know that all the usual cautions apply:

We should look at groups of studies, not just one study.

Pilegard’s research focused on college students. Will this strategy work with other students? We don’t know for sure.

These video lessons were quite short: under two minutes each. Will this strategy work over longer periods of time? We don’t know for sure.

In other words — this research offers a promising strategy. And, we need more research with students who resemble our own classrooms and lessons that last longer to have greater confidence.

I myself do plan to think about gestures for upcoming lessons. But I won’t ignore all the other teaching strategies (retrieval practice, cognitive load management, etc.). Here’s hoping that future research can point the way…

By the way:

Teachers often ask how they can get copies of research to study it for themselves.

Easy answer #1: Google Scholar.

If that doesn’t work, I recommend easy answer #2: email the researcher.

In this case, I emailed Dr. Pilegard asking for a copy of the study — and she emailed it to me 11 minutes later.

In honor of her doing so, I’m creating the Pilegard Award for Prompt Generosity in Sharing Research with People who Email You Out of the Blue.

No doubt it will be much coveted.