Gesturing while talking affects our thoughts

Scientists have a new explanation for why many people can’t talk without keeping their hands still. They have suggested that gestures provide a visual clue to our thoughts and may even change our thoughts by grounding them in action. University of Chicago scientists Sian Beilock and Susan Goldin-Meadow brought together two lines of research — Beilock’s work on how action affects thought and Goldin-Meadow’s work on gesture. And they designed a new study together to look at how gesture affects thought. The researchers asked the volunteers to solve a problem known as the ‘Tower of Hanoi’. It’s a game in which you have to move stacked disks from one peg to another. After they finished, the volunteers were taken into another room and asked to explain how they did it. (This is virtually impossible to explain without using your hands.) Then the volunteers tried the task again. But there was a trick: For some people, the weight of the disks had secretly changed. People who had used one hand in their gestures when talking about moving the small disk were in trouble when that disk got heavier. They took longer to complete the task than did people who used two hands in their gestures — and the more one-handed gestures they used, the longer they took. This shows that how you gesture affects how you think.
Source:Deccan herald