Getting a Handle on Mathematics

November 15, 2007

Psychologists at the University of Chicago report that gesturing can help children do better in mathematics.

In the studies' baseline phase, Sara C. Broaders, Susan Wagner Cook, Zachary Mitchell, and Susan Goldin-Meadow asked 176 children in late third and early fourth grade to solve six math problems on a chalkboard and explain how they solved each one. The researchers asked some students, selected at random, to gesture during their explanations. Others were asked not to gesture, and a third group — the control group — was given no instructions. The researchers then coded and analyzed their videotaped efforts.

Children who were told to move their hands when explaining how they solved the problems were four times more likely than those given no instruction to reveal an implicit knowledge of mathematical ideas. For example, to indicate the need for both sides of an equation to be equal, some children would sweep their palms first under a problem's left side and then under its right side. A subsequent study showed that those who'd been told to gesture about math problems and then had a lesson solved 1.5 times more problems correctly than did children who'd been told not to gesture.

The findings apparently strengthen research revealing that body movements help people to express ideas, offering a potentially powerful way to augment the teaching of math. The authors concluded, "Telling children to gesture encourages them to convey previously unexpressed, implicit ideas, which in turn makes them receptive to instruction that leads to learning."

The article "Making Children Gesture Brings Out Implicit Knowledge and Leads to Learning" appears in the most recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Source: American Psychological Association, Nov. 4, 2007.