Loading...
Major
Neuroscience
Anticipated Graduation Year
2022
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Gestures have been shown to help vocabulary learning if the form and movement trajectory of the gesture visually represent a word being learned. A possible mechanism underlying this positive effect of gesture on learning is visual attention. In the current study, participants learned foreign vocabulary through speech alone or speech+gesture while their visual attention was measured. We also manipulated whether the teacher wore a mask, to understand how masking during the COVID-19 pandemic may further affect vocabulary learning. We hypothesized that participants would learn more in the gesture condition and that when a lecturer is wearing a mask, the participant would attend more to gestures allowing for more words to be learned.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Elizabeth Wakefield
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Understanding How Mask Wearing and Gesture can Impact Vocabulary Learning
Gestures have been shown to help vocabulary learning if the form and movement trajectory of the gesture visually represent a word being learned. A possible mechanism underlying this positive effect of gesture on learning is visual attention. In the current study, participants learned foreign vocabulary through speech alone or speech+gesture while their visual attention was measured. We also manipulated whether the teacher wore a mask, to understand how masking during the COVID-19 pandemic may further affect vocabulary learning. We hypothesized that participants would learn more in the gesture condition and that when a lecturer is wearing a mask, the participant would attend more to gestures allowing for more words to be learned.