Poster #35 - Point to Those! Grouping Gestures Predict Children’s Early Patterning Skills

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Children’s patterning can lead to the mastery of many abstract cognitive skills. Indeed, early patterning skills have been shown to relate to formal math and reading achievement (see Burgoyne, Witteveen, Tolan, Malone, & Hulme, 2017). Research is now needed to characterize children’s early patterning skills and factors that relate to performance. In the current study, we focused on individual differences in children’s gestures on a pattern abstraction task. Gesture can have a powerful effect on thinking, and children’s spontaneous gestures often influence their problem-solving strategies as well as their ability to learn from instruction (e.g., Goldin-Meadow & Beilock, 2010).
In this study, 40 children (M age = 5.5 years; 57.5% female) completed a series of pattern abstraction tasks, which require children to recreate the structure of a pattern using novel materials (e.g. provide the pattern ‘circle-circle-square’ and ask to create the same kind of pattern using different shapes such as ‘triangle-triangle-star’). Children were first asked to solve and explain one baseline item with no instructional input to gauge their initial understanding. Children were then shown several worked examples intermixed with 9 solve items, on which they were asked to abstract the pattern and explain their response (see Figure 1).
We coded children’s gestures during their explanations as one of five different types listed in Table 1. A second researcher coded 35% of responses and interrater agreement was high (96%). We were particularly interested in gestures that “grouped” multiple pattern elements together – potentially indicating that children understood the structure of the pattern (e.g., noticing there were always two circles next to each other).
Children were novices on the task; only 35% of children solved the baseline item correctly. Further, a full 48% did not gesture and only 5% used a grouping gesture at baseline. However, children did improve. Across the 9 solve items, the average score was 53% (SD = 35%), and gestures were used on nearly 70% of trials. The most common gesture was to point to multiple elements one at a time; however, children used the grouping gesture 19% of the time and almost half of the children used it at least once (Table 1). To investigate the relations between gesture usage and task performance, we ran a Pearson correlation between the frequency of using each gesture type and total pattern scores on the 9 solve items. There was a significant positive correlation between the use of grouping gestures and total pattern score, r(38) = .41, p = .008. Further, this relation held in a regression model even after controlling for performance on the baseline item, ß = .36, p = .007. No other gesture type related to performance.
In sum, individual differences in the use of grouping gestures predict children’s ability to solve novel pattern tasks. Grouping gestures may align with cognitive representations that facilitate the recognition of structure and repetition in patterns. The results in this study suggest that gesture indeed plays a profound role in thinking and learning about patterns.

Authors

• Alicia Macchione, Indiana University
  Presenting Author

• Nicholas A. Vest, Indiana University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily R. Fyfe, Indiana University
  Non-Presenting Author