Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study investigates whether making and observing(human) gestures facilitates learning about non-humanbiological movements and whether correspondence betweengesture and to-be-learned movement is superior to non-correspondence. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy wasused to address whether gestures activate the human mirror-neuron system (hMNS) and whether this activation mediatesthe facilitation of learning. During learning, participantsviewed the animations of the to-be-learned movements twice.Depending on the condition, the second viewing wassupplemented with either a self-gesturing instruction (Y/N)and/or a gesture video (corresponding/non-corresponding/no).Results showed that high-visuospatial-ability learners showedbetter learning outcomes with non-corresponding gestures,whereas those gestures were detrimental for low-visuospatial-ability learners. Furthermore, the activation of the inferior-parietal cortex (part of the hMNS) tended to predict betterlearning outcomes. Unexpectedly, making gestures did notinfluence learning, but cortical activation differed for learnerswho self-gestured depending on which gesture they observed.Results and implications are discussed.