Long Term Memory – response 2
This is a response to the second reading presented by one of my classmates for the study of long term memory for 6411 Cognition and Learning.
As an older adult who has always dreamed of acquiring a second language, this article and topic caught my attention. It brought back memories of sitting in the language lab in university, listening and practicing to learn French. It brought back memories of walking and talking with a colleague who spoke French as a first language, to practice what I had learned in the lab years before. When the Aim Language Learning program was introduced into the school, when I was a school administrator, I noticed a marked decrease in students being sent out of French classes for misbehaviour. One teacher I worked with taught the whole class to use sign language to teach everyone in the classroom, as a means to provide an inclusive environment for a hearing impaired student. At the time I wasn’t aware of the impact, but I remember commenting that the students I was working with as a special education teacher were noticeably improving their reading skills. So, this article definitely connects to my personal experiences.
In which educational context could you envision the use of gestures? Have you ever used gestures in your teaching or during your learning to enhance retention of new material?
The first example that comes to mind would be the use of finger plays in kindergarten. I don’t think this fits into the form of gesturing that Macedonia and Klimesch (2014) reference since the gestures don’t closely associate actions to words, but relates to Eduardo’s article by Dutriaux and Gyselinck (2016) in that the motor simulations help encode the song and words into memory.
Macedonia and Klimesch (2014) reference the connectivity theory of memory (CT) suggesting that “retrieval is more efficient when the representation is more complex and when the interconnectedness within the code’s components is higher” (p. 82) which may be why finger plays continue to be an effective way to teach young children a first language, but are they also effective in teaching second language learners?
What did catch my attention was this statement “In fact, iconicity is a factor that can facilitate the acquisition of verbal information through EN” as suggested by (Macedonia & Klimesch, 2014, p. 84) with EN referring to enactment. So the icon, or image, used to represent the object or concept will impact how readily a verbal and enacted term, such as ‘apple’ will be. Makes me wonder how this would impact the use of images what are iconic rather than realistic in the development of memorable conceptions of objects in a second language. If I use a real hammer, or a picture of a real hammer, or an icon of a hammer, which would be help me remember the term [https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-italian/hammer]? How does quality of multimodal information impact the ultimate learning of concept, beyond the gestural connections that may be arbitrarily attached to the term?
References
Aim Language Learning. (n.d.). What is AIM? [website]. Retrieved from http://www.aimlanguagelearning.com/media/
Macedonia, M. & Klimesch, W. (2014). Long-term effects of gestures on memory for foreign language words trained in the classroom. Mind, Brain & Education, 8(2), 74–88.
Comment to prompt from a classmate:
As I was reading through this comment, something pinged in my brain. I went back and reread to figure out what it was – no gestures needed. Your referenced Ping and Goldin-Meadow (2008) in the use of gestures that “work just as well when they express symbols or even abstract concepts”. Semiotics jumped to mind and I searched to find how this connects to gesturing to learn abstract concepts.
Arzarello, Paolo, Robutti, and Sabena (2009) describe how gestures are one part of what they call a semiotic bundle, which includes speech, inscriptions, artifacts and gestures. They consider a semiotic resource as something that represents something to somebody, so gestures become part of the way meaning is made. These researchers analyzed small groups working in a mathematics class to view “semiotic activities of students as a holistic process where all the components of the bundle (gestures, inscriptions, utterances) are simultaneously active, intertwined with each other, and shared by the group” (p. 102). I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the meaning making in second language learning and wondered if there could be a similar form of semiotic bundling that includes gestures, images, objects, vocalizations, and inscriptions, to make concepts and abstractions stick in long term memory. Engaging a multimodal form of instruction could reap benefits, as it shows, as Arzarello et al. (2009) conclude, that richer, more complex systems of mental processing occur with semiotic bundling.
References
Arzarello, F., Paolo, D., Robutti, O., & Sabena, C. (2009). Gestures as semiotic resources in the mathematics classroom. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 70, 97-109.
Ping, R. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2008). Hands in the air: using ungrounded iconic gestures to teach children conservation of quantity. Developmental Psychology, (5), 1277.
And a final response to another prompt about my graphic art compositions as part of gestures and cognition.
I never thought about the graphics I create as a form of gestural stimulation to encode concepts into cognition. I connected more to a means to pull ideas into a chunk so it’s easier to remember the whole, bit idea, rather than each individual part. Now that I think about it, my preference for markers, crayons and gel pens makes more sense since I’m gaining the textual feedback when creating. I have done some graphics on my iPad, but because of the lack of ‘feel’ when creating, I don’t use this tool as often.
My beginning graphics are certainly messier than the finished one, but not quite the same as the images you’ve shared here. Something I need to remember – cognitive development through gestures through art.
