Gestures and pictures 'boost foreign language learning'

Date: Feb-09-2015 A new study reinforces the multisensory theory of learning that says people learn

more easily when several senses are activated at the same time. Using an artificial

language they developed for research, scientists ran experiments to show people memorize

foreign language terms more easily when - as well as reading and listening - they see

pictures and express their meaning with gestures.

When learning new foreign

words, it helps to have images of those words at the same time as reading and listening to

them.
Image credit: Max Planck Institute/ v.

Kriegstein

The team - from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in

Leipzig, Germany - reports the findings in the journal Current Biology.

Many people - based on their school experience - would probably say that rote learning

of long lists is perhaps not the best approach, but the study authors say it is largely

unclear how the human brain optimally learns foreign languages.

The study suggests adding images to learning by reading and listening helps,

but adding gestures helps even more, particularly when those gestures - which engage the

motor senses - are performed by the learners themselves.

For their study, Katharina von Kriegstein - professor and leader of the Neural

Mechanisms of Human Communication Group at Max Planck - and colleagues used Vimmish, an

artificial language they developed themselves that has similar phonetic rules to

Italian.

Over the course of a week, they invited a group of young men and women to memorize the

meaning of concrete (for example, "bicycle") and abstract (for example, "thought") nouns in

Vimmish using three different approaches.

In the first approach, the learners read the Vimmish word and its translation and

also heard it. In the second approach, the reading and listening method was also

accompanied by seeing an image and a gesture that either drew the image in the air or

symbolized it.

The third approach was similar to the second, except the learners performed the

gesture themselves.

"Atesi" in Vimmish means "thought." The following video shows the gesture for it:

Next, the learners were tested on their recall of the meaning of the Vimmish

words they had learned while the researchers took functional magnetic resonance imaging

(fMRI) scans of their brains.

Recall was better when enriched with pictures and self-expressed gestures

The results showed that recall was better when the words had been learned with

gestures and pictures, compared with just listening and reading - particularly when the

learners performed the gestures themselves.

When they analyzed the brain scans, the researchers found different parts of the brain

correlated with the approaches had been used to learn the word; recalling words learned with pictures activated the visual system, while recalling words learned through gestures activated the

motor system.

The team says they now want to find out whether the activity in the motor and visual

centers is actually the cause of the improved learning. They plan to do this by

activating brain cells in those regions using electrodes and measuring the effect on

learning results.

Speculating on the notion that the more senses that are engaged the better the

learning, Prof. von Kriegstein says: "That could well be so, but we

don't know how much the learning outcomes improve with the addition of more senses." She adds:

"Ideally, however, the individual sensory impressions should match one

another. In other words, to learn the Spanish word for apple, the subject should make an

apple gesture, taste an apple or look at a picture of an apple."

In October 2014, Medical News Today reported how another group of researchers

found that mental rest and reflection boost learning.

That study showed that when we relax our minds and reflect, we not only consolidate

memories - as previous research has already established - but we also improve future

learning.

Written by Catharine Paddock PhD

Courtesy: Medical News Today Note: Any medical information available in this news section is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional.