Gesturing While Talking Alters Thoughts

Many people gesture with their hands while talking. This animated way of talking certainly helps in expressing one’s thoughts, expressions and emotions, but researchers have found that that’s not the only aid it provides.

Many people gesture with their hands while talking. This animated way of talking certainly helps in expressing one’s thoughts, expressions and emotions, but researchers have found that that’s not the only aid it provides. University of Chicago psychological scientists Sian Beilock and Susan Goldin-Meadow have found that gesturing while talking may even change our thoughts, by grounding them in action. For the study, published in Psychological Science, the researchers asked participants to solve a problem called the Tower of Hanoi, where you have to move stacked discs from one peg to another. After they were finished, the participants were taken to another room and asked to describe how they completed the puzzle. They were then asked to attempt the puzzle again. Unknown to them, some of the lighter discs had been switched with heavier ones; they now required two hands to move them, instead of one.

The researchers dicovered that those who explained the solution gesturing with one hand, found it harder using both hands, and took longer to solve it. Goldin-Meadow and Beilock suggest that the volunteers had ‘cemented’ how to solve the puzzle in their heads by gesturing about it (and were thrown off keel by the change in the game).

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