Italians and Dutch share the same gestural instinct for teaching
A new study reveals that Italian and Dutch adults use similar hand gestures when teaching children, despite cultural differences in overall gesture use. Both groups increased their use of two-handed gestures when explaining unfamiliar concepts, indicating a shared communicative strategy. The research highlights the instinctive ways adults adapt their teaching methods to enhance children's understanding across cultures.
- ▪Italian and Dutch adults modify their gestures similarly when teaching children.
- ▪Both groups used more two-handed representational gestures when explaining new concepts.
- ▪The study suggests that spontaneous human teaching relies on shared communicative strategies.
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New study by Emanuela Campisi (University of Catania) and Anita Slominska and Asli Ozyurek (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) reveals that Italian and Dutch adults adapt their hand gestures in remarkably similar ways when explaining new concepts to children. When adults teach children something new, words are only part of the story. A new cross-cultural study shows that adults from different cultures instinctively modify their gestures in similar ways to help children learn, suggesting that spontaneous human teaching may rely on a shared, deeply rooted communicative strategy.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Mpi.
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