A new study by researchers from the University of California and University of Georgia identified hand gestures as an effective technique for students to retain new information.

The team wanted to know if gestures used by teachers could assist in mental organisation of new information, and help students retain and understand lesson content. To do this, they devised two experiments, looking specifically at two types of hand motion: structure gestures, which indicated which of two groups was being discussed by gestures made to the left or right, and surface gestures, which illustrated physical characteristics.

The team found that students who had seen the lesson with structure gestures scored significantly higher in inference tests. This suggests that physical gestures allocating spoken information into physical spaces helps students to better construct an organised mental framework of lesson material, from which they could make accurate inferences.

However, gestures aren’t a silver bullet for everything. Neither structure nor surface gestures improved basic recall of the material. Similarly, participants who saw surface gestures showed no difference in their inference scores compared to those who didn’t.