A Study of the Live Evolution of Mental Models Through Gesture

• In Event: Poster Session 18
  In Poster Session: Gestures, Models, and Explanations in STEM Learning

Abstract

How students and scientists construct and revise mental models remains the core focus of many research agendas. The present study focuses on gestures that both unveil and shape the active assembly – not merely the post hoc reflection – of mental models. Three college students modeled with their bodies their learning of the packet switching system and naturally adopted the perspective of both insider components (packets and routers) and third-person onlookers. In this way, gestural play established a multiperspective mental model that dissolved the barrier between observer and observed; students became components in the system, and then moments later, became observers of those components. These perspectival shifts establish for students complex conditions for tracking narrative and spatial continuity in mental models.

Author

• David DeLiema, University of California - Los Angeles