Enhancing learning with hand gestures: Potential mechanisms

Abstract Gestures are robust behaviors that influence communication, learning and memory. Here evidence that gesture can support math learning and word learning in children and adults is reviewed. Although there is robust evidence revealing beneficial effects of gesture on learning across ages and across domains, it is not clear what mechanisms underlie these effects. Gestures may change learning via a variety of cognitive processes, including perceptual, attentional, memory, linguistic and conceptual processes. In order to delineate among the various potential mechanisms by which gesture supports learning, researchers studying gesture need to develop more specific predictions about exactly which gestures will support learning and precisely when these gestures will be helpful.