The Role of Gestures in Mental Animation
We examined the use of hand gestures while people solved spatial reasoning problems in which they had to infer how components of a mechanical device will move from a static diagram of the device (mental animation problems). In Experiment 1, participants were asked to think aloud while solving mental...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
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Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
2005
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43435 |
| _version_ | 1848756690966544384 |
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| author | Hegarty, M. Mayer, S. Kriz, S. Keehner, Madeleine |
| author_facet | Hegarty, M. Mayer, S. Kriz, S. Keehner, Madeleine |
| author_sort | Hegarty, M. |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | We examined the use of hand gestures while people solved spatial reasoning problems in which they had to infer how components of a mechanical device will move from a static diagram of the device (mental animation problems). In Experiment 1, participants were asked to think aloud while solving mental animation problems. They gestured on more than 90% of problems, and most gestures expressed information about the component motions that was not stated in words. Two further experiments examined whether the gestures functioned in the mechanical inference process, or whether they merely served functions of expressing or communicating the results of this process. In these experiments, we examined the effects of instructions to think aloud, restricting participants' hand motions, and secondary tasks on mental animation performance. Although participants who were instructed to think aloud gestured more than control groups, some gestures occurred even in control conditions. A concurrent spatial tapping task impaired performance on mechanical reasoning, whereas a simple tapping task and restricting hand motions did not. These results indicate that gestures are a natural way of expressing the results of mental animation processes and suggest that spatial working memory and premotor representations are involved in mental animation. They provide no direct evidence that gestures are functional in the thought process itself, but do not rule out a role for overt gestures in this type of spatial thinking. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T09:16:13Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-43435 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T09:16:13Z |
| publishDate | 2005 |
| publisher | Lawrence Erlbaum Associates |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-434352017-01-30T15:07:25Z The Role of Gestures in Mental Animation Hegarty, M. Mayer, S. Kriz, S. Keehner, Madeleine imagery mental animation reasoning spatial gesture mechanical We examined the use of hand gestures while people solved spatial reasoning problems in which they had to infer how components of a mechanical device will move from a static diagram of the device (mental animation problems). In Experiment 1, participants were asked to think aloud while solving mental animation problems. They gestured on more than 90% of problems, and most gestures expressed information about the component motions that was not stated in words. Two further experiments examined whether the gestures functioned in the mechanical inference process, or whether they merely served functions of expressing or communicating the results of this process. In these experiments, we examined the effects of instructions to think aloud, restricting participants' hand motions, and secondary tasks on mental animation performance. Although participants who were instructed to think aloud gestured more than control groups, some gestures occurred even in control conditions. A concurrent spatial tapping task impaired performance on mechanical reasoning, whereas a simple tapping task and restricting hand motions did not. These results indicate that gestures are a natural way of expressing the results of mental animation processes and suggest that spatial working memory and premotor representations are involved in mental animation. They provide no direct evidence that gestures are functional in the thought process itself, but do not rule out a role for overt gestures in this type of spatial thinking. 2005 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43435 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates fulltext |
| spellingShingle | imagery mental animation reasoning spatial gesture mechanical Hegarty, M. Mayer, S. Kriz, S. Keehner, Madeleine The Role of Gestures in Mental Animation |
| title | The Role of Gestures in Mental Animation |
| title_full | The Role of Gestures in Mental Animation |
| title_fullStr | The Role of Gestures in Mental Animation |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Role of Gestures in Mental Animation |
| title_short | The Role of Gestures in Mental Animation |
| title_sort | role of gestures in mental animation |
| topic | imagery mental animation reasoning spatial gesture mechanical |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43435 |