Schedule of Events | Symposia

Graduate Student Award Winner

Gesture-based instruction enhances neural synchrony and predicts children’s mathematical learning

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Marine Yumeng Wang¹ (marinewang@uchicago.edu), Marc Berman¹, Susan Goldin-Meadow¹, Yuan Chang Leong¹; ¹University of Chicago

Teachers’ hand movements during lessons influence how children learn mathematics, yet not all movements are equally effective. For instance, in solving 4+2+5=_+5, gesture-based instruction, where a teacher forms a V-shaped hand under the 4 and 2 and points to the blank (the “grouping strategy”), promotes learning more than action-based instruction, where magnetic numbers are physically manipulated. We use fNIRS to measure neural activity as participants watch the same videotaped lesson that either contains gestures or actions. Eighty children (aged 8–10) participated in a math lesson while undergoing fNIRS. They were randomly assigned to the gesture (n=40) or action condition (n=40). In the gesture condition, participants watched videos where the instructor gestured the grouping strategy. In the action condition, the instructor moved magnetic number tiles instead of gesturing. Before and after the lesson, participants completed tests on mathematical equivalence. Inter-subject correlation analysis (ISC) was used to identify neural synchrony differences between the conditions and examine their relationship to learning outcomes. ISC was significantly higher in the gesture condition than in the action condition in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) (r = 0.17, p < 0.001), right angular gyrus (r = 0.19, p = 0.001), and right motor area (r = 0.13, p < 0.001). Furthermore, ISC in the rTPJ during gesture videos correlated with improvement (r = 0.44, p = 0.003), but not during action videos. The rTPJ, implicated in theory of mind, may reflect children’s recognition of gestures as communicative acts, helping them interpret the instructor’s intent and enhance learning.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Development & aging