1. Gesturing has a larger impact on problem-solving than action, even when action is accompanied by words Caroline Trofatter*, Carly Kontra, Sian Beilock and Susan Goldin-Meadow Chirag Gupta Shashank Bhandari Chirag Gupta Shashank Bhandari

2. Overview : To study the impact of Gesture on behavior as compared to Speech and Action.

3. Previous Theories : Extensive theoretical and empirical support for the tight link between gesture and speech. Gesture's influence on thought tightly correlated with its close relationship to speech. Interface Hypothesis (Kita and Ozyurek) : "Gestures are generated from spatio-motoric processes that interact on-line with the speech production process.“ Integrated-systems hypothesis (Kelly, Ozyurek and Maris) : The influence of gesture on speech is bidirectional. Gesture affects comprehension, not just production. Simulated Action Framework (Hostetter and Alibali) : "Gestures emerge from perceptual and motor simulations that underlie embodied language and mental imagery."

4. Previous Theories : Growth Point Hypothesis (McNeill and Duncan) : Both gesture and speech are "material carriers" of thought. They are "growth points" that "bring thinking into existences as modes of cognitive being". 'Thinking' is naturally embodied in a combination of imagery and linguistic content. Thus, gesture affects thinking only through its interactions with the language system during communication.

5. Proposed Theory : Gesture's representational properties are essential in understanding it's affects on consequent behaviour. The theory is verified by contrasting Action with Gesture in a novel experiment.

6. The Experiment : Time taken to solve the Tower of Hanoi was recorded for two subsequent solves. Participants were divided into three groups based on the activity they perform in the explanation phase and were further divided into Switch and No Switch sub-groups. For the Switch sub-groups, the weights of the disks were changed between the two solves.

7. Previous Work : Beilock and Goldin-Meadow (2010) “Gesture+Talk vs No Explanation” Goldin-Meadow and Beilock (2010) “Gesture+Talk vs Action”

8. Results and Analysis :

10. Conclusion : "When participants interact with the puzzle using concrete actions, even when task-relevant speech is coordinated with those actions, much of the sensorimotor information about the discs is off-loaded onto the environment. In contrast, gestures produced in the absence of the discs have the potential to play a more influential role in constructing a mental representation of the task."

11. References : Goldin-Meadow, S., & Beilock, S.L. (2010). Action’s influence on thought: The case of gesture. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 664-674. doi:10.1177/1745691610388764 Hostetter, A., & Alibali, M. W. (2008). Visible embodiment: Gestures as simulated action. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 15, 495–514. doi:10.3758/PBR.15.3.495 Kelly, S. D., Ozyurek, A., & Maris, E. (2010). Two sides of the same coin: Speech and gesture mutually interact to enhance comprehension. Psychological Science, 21, 260–267. doi:10.1177/0956797609357327 Kita, S., & Ozyurek, A. (2003). What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal? Evidence for an interface representation of spatial thinking and speaking. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 16–32. doi:10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00505-3 Kita, S., Ozyurek, A., Allen, S., Brown, A., Furman, R., & Ishizuka, T. (2007). Relations between syntactic encoding and co-speech gestures: Implications for a model of speech and gesture. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22, 1212–1236. doi:10.1080/01690960701461426 McNeill, D., & Duncan, S. (2000). Growth points in thinking-for-speaking. In D. McNeill (ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 141-161). New York, NY : Cambridge University Press.