title: Gesturing during mental problem solving reduces eye movements, especially for individuals with lower visual working memory capacity.
abstract: Non-communicative hand gestures have been found to benefit problem-solving performance. These gestures seem to compensate for limited internal cognitive capacities, such as visual working memory capacity. Yet, it is not clear how gestures might perform this cognitive function. One hypothesis is that gesturing is a means to spatially index mental simulations, thereby reducing the need for visually projecting the mental simulation onto the visual presentation of the task. If that hypothesis is correct, less eye movements should be made when participants gesture during problem solving than when they do not gesture. We therefore used mobile eye tracking to investigate the effect of co-thought gesturing and visual working memory capacity on eye movements during mental solving of the Tower of Hanoi problem. Results revealed that gesturing indeed reduced the number of eye movements (lower saccade counts), especially for participants with a relatively lower visual working memory capacity. Subsequent problem-solving performance was not affected by having (not) gestured during the mental solving phase. The current findings suggest that our understanding of gestures in problem solving could be improved by taking into account eye movements during gesturing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. pouw@fsw.eur.nl.|Early Start Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia. pouw@fsw.eur.nl.
authors.forename: Wim T J L
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2729-6502
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Pouw
authors.affiliation: Early Start Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.
authors.forename: Myrto-Foteini
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Mavilidi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.|Department of Education, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Tamara
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: van Gog
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.|Early Start Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.
authors.forename: Fred
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Paas
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Embodied cognition; Eye tracking; Gesture; Problem solving; Tower of Hanoi