Children’s Gesture Use in Embodied Pretend Play and Learning Outcomes

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

Children’s gesture promotes learning and memory in various academic subjects as well as basic cognitive abilities, such as conservation of quantity (Alzubi et al., 2018; Cook et al., 2008; Ping & Goldin-Meadow, 2008). Pre-school aged children can recognize differences in gesture type (Novack et al., 2018), and their use of gesture improves learning in non-academic subjects (Cameron & Xu, 2011). Yet, while gesture is a promising educational tool (Kontra et al., 2012), it has not been examined in a context and activity central to pre-school children’s time and development: pretend play. We address this unexamined area of children’s gesture by investigating pre-school children’s gesture in three pretend play scenarios. We then examine if gesture impacts the learning of pretense scenario information, and parse which gesture type is most consequential to learning. We also investigate affect, looking at whether and how gesture is related to children’s affective engagement.
Children (M age = 53.6 months) were randomly assigned to participate in one of three pretense scenarios (no embodiment while watching films or listening to stories, partial embodiment while playing with puppets, and fully embodied while playing a costumed role), and their participation was filmed. A coding manual of gesture based on Cutica et al. (2014) and Kang et al. (2015) was developed to code for type of gesture (deictic, iconic, metaphoric, symbolic, beats), and level of embodiment (hand gesture, body gesture). Following Ware et al. (2017), gesture instances were coded using a 0 (no/did not occur) and 1 (yes/did occur); coding has an inter-rater reliability of 0.86. Children’s affect during the play was also scored, using a 0 (negative), 1 (neutral), and 2 (positive) scale, and has an inter-rater reliability rate of 0.81.
Preliminary analysis (>20% of sample; video coding continues during COVID-19 closures) showed that partially and fully embodied play elicit more gestures overall than non-embodied play (p < 0.001). Analysis on embodiment level of gesture further revealed that fully embodied play elicits more body gestures than partially embodied play and non-embodied play (p < 0.000). This first test of gesture during pretend play shows that more embodied pretend play (i.e. puppet and costume play) are associated with more gesture than passive pretense engagement (i.e., watching TV or listening to stories).
Analysis on types of gestures revealed that increased deictic gesture use improved learning outcomes at a trend level (p = 0.071). Additionally, children’s affect is trending towards affecting children’s learning (p = 0.060) and gesture use (p = 0.064), where more positive affect is related to improved learning outcomes and increased gesture use. These preliminary results also suggest that embodied learning paradigms increase children’s gesture use, which may increase learning compared to non-embodied learning, specifically when deictic gesture is used.
Our findings highlight the importance of active physicalized learning activities and suggest that deictic gesture use may be especially beneficial for pre-school aged children’s learning. Results promote the use of embodied learning and gesture in pretend play as a pedagogical technique for pre-schoolers’ learning.

Authors

• Megan Stutesman, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Thalia Raquel Goldstein, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author