Francesco Ianì

Learning from text benefits from enactment.

Classical studies on enactment have highlighted the beneficial effects of gestures performed in the encoding phase on memory for words and sentences, for both adults and children. In the present investigation, we focused on the role of enactment for learning from scientific texts among primary-school children. We assumed that enactment would favor the construction of a mental model of the text, and we verified the derived predictions that gestures at the time of encoding would result in greater numbers of correct recollections and discourse-based inferences at recall, as compared to no gestures (Exp. 1), and in a bias to confound paraphrases of the original text with the verbatim text in a recognition test (Exp. 2). The predictions were confirmed; hence, we argue in favor of a theoretical framework that accounts for the beneficial effects of enactment on memory for texts.

The Multilingual CID-5: A New Tool to Study the Perception of Communicative Interactions in Different Languages

The investigation of the ability to perceive, recognize, and judge upon social intentions, such as communicative intentions, on the basis of body motion is a growing research area. Cross-cultural differences in ability to perceive and interpret biological motion, however, have been poorly investigated so far. Progress in this domain strongly depends on the availability of suitable stimulus material. In the present method paper, we describe the multilingual CID-5, an extension of the CID-5 database, allowing for the investigation of how non-conventional communicative gestures are classified and identified by speakers of different languages. The CID-5 database contains 14 communicative interactions and 7 non-communicative actions performed by couples of agents and presented as point-light displays. For each action, the database provides movie files with the point-light animation, text files with the 3-D spatial coordinates of the point-lights, and five different response alternatives. In the multilingual CID-5 the alternatives were translated into seven languages (Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Polish). Preliminary data collected to assess the recognizability of the actions in the different languages suggest that, for most of the action stimuli, information presented in point-light displays is sufficient for the distinctive classification of the action as communicative vs. individual, as well as for identification of the specific communicative gesture performed by the actor in all the available languages.

Stopping movements: when others slow us down.

Previous research has shown that performing joint actions can lead to the representation of both ones own and others’ actions. In the present study we explored the influence of co‐representation on response stopping. Are joint actions more difficult to stop than solo actions? Using a variation of the stop‐signal task, we found that participants needed more time to stop a planned joint action compared with a planned solo action (Experiment 1). This effect was not observed when participants performed the task in the presence of a passive observer (Experiment 2). A third transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment (Experiment 3) demonstrated that joint stopping recruited a more selective suppression mechanism than solo stopping. Taken together, these results suggest that participants used a global inhibition mechanism when acting alone; however, they recruited a more selective and slower suppression mechanism when acting with someone else.

Timing of Gestures: Gestures Anticipating or Simultaneous With Speech as Indexes of Text Comprehension in Children and Adults

The deep comprehension of a text is tantamount to the construction of an articulated mental model of that text. The number of correct recollections is an index of a learners mental model of a text. We assume that another index of comprehension is the timing of the gestures produced during text recall; gestures are simultaneous with speech when the learner has built an articulated mental model of the text, whereas they anticipate the speech when the learner has built a less articulated mental model. The results of four experiments confirm the predictions deriving from our assumptions for both children and adults. Provided that the recollections are correct, the timing of gestures can differ and can be considered a further measure of the quality of the mental model, beyond the number of correct recollections.

Relevance of the listener’s motor system in recalling phrases enacted by the speaker

ABSTRACT Memory for series of action phrases improves in listeners when speakers accompany each phrase with congruent gestures compared to when speakers stay still. Studies reveal that the listeners’ motor system, at encoding, plays a crucial role in this enactment effect. We present two experiments on gesture observation, which explored the role of the listeners’ motor system at recall. The participants listened to the phrases uttered by a speaker in two conditions in each experiment. In the gesture condition, the speaker uttered the phrases with accompanying congruent gestures, and in the no-gesture condition, the speaker stayed still while uttering the phrases. The participants were then invited, in both conditions of the experiments, to perform a motor task while recalling the phrases proffered by the speaker. The results revealed that the advantage of observing gestures on memory disappears if the listeners move at recall arms and hands (same motor effectors moved by the speaker, Experiment 1a), but not when the listeners move legs and feet (different motor effectors from those moved by the speaker, Experiment 1b). The results suggest that the listeners’ motor system is involved not only during the encoding of action phrases uttered by a speaker but also when recalling these phrases during retrieval.

The beneficial effect of a speaker’s gestures on the listener’s memory for action phrases: The pivotal role of the listener’s premotor cortex

HighlightsMemory for action sentences improves during observation of congruent gestures.The listener’s motor system plays a crucial in this enactment effect.The results reveal a pivotal role of the listener’s premotor cortex. &NA; Memory for action phrases improves in the listeners when the speaker accompanies them with gestures compared to when the speaker stays still. Since behavioral studies revealed a pivotal role of the listeners’ motor system, we aimed to disentangle the role of primary motor and premotor cortices. Participants had to recall phrases uttered by a speaker in two conditions: in the gesture condition, the speaker performed gestures congruent with the action; in the no‐gesture condition, the speaker stayed still. In Experiment 1, half of the participants underwent inhibitory rTMS over the hand/arm region of the left premotor cortex (PMC) and the other half over the hand/arm region of the left primary motor cortex (M1). The enactment effect disappeared only following rTMS over PMC. In Experiment 2, we detected the usual enactment effect after rTMS over vertex, thereby excluding possible nonspecific rTMS effects. These findings suggest that the information encoded in the premotor cortex is a crucial part of the memory trace.