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Effects Of Simultaneously Observing And Making Gestures While Studying Grammar Animations On Cognitive Load And Learning, Lysanne S. Post, Tamara Van Gog, Fred Paas, Rolf A. Zwaan

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This study examined whether simultaneously observing and making gestures while studying animations would lighten cognitive load and facilitate the acquisition of grammatical rules. In contrast to our hypothesis, results showed that children in the gesturing condition performed worse on the posttest than children in the non-gesturing, control condition. A more detailed analysis of the data revealed an expertise reversal effect, indicating that this negative effect on posttest performance materialized for children with lower levels of general language skills, but not for children with higher levels of general language skills. The finding that for children with lower language ability, cognitive load …