The Influence Of Gestures On The Solution Of Spatial Insights

Gestures,as a special manifestation of body activity,often serve for speech,thinking or communicating with others.Empirical studies have shown that gestures not only promote individual learning,language comprehension,and problem solving,but also have a unique advantage in expressing spatial information and dealing with space issues.What's more,some researchers have found that gestures can improve creative performance.Innovation is the soul of a nation's progress and an inexhaustible motive force for a country's prosperity.Therefore,the in-depth study and discussion of the relationship between gestures and innovative thinking is extremely important and practical.Insight problem-solving is one of the most representative innovative thinking activities.This study employs the spatial Insight problems as experimental materials according to the superior performance of gestures in spatial cognition.We conducted three experiments in order to discern the influence of gestures on the solution of spatial insight problem-solving with behavior experiment method.Experiment 1 investigated whether the gesture simulation of different angles can solve the six matches problem according to the spatial characteristics of gestures.There were 84 college students participating in experiment 1,including 41 boys and43 girls.The result indicated that the gesture simulation group was significantly higher than the clap group in problem resolution rate.The gesture simulation group found to have a higher problem resolution rate.In the number of problem attempts,the gesture simulation group was significantly less than the clap group.Experiment 2 investigated whether the beat gesture of playing the "V" or inverted "V" with music can promote the resolution of the tumor-laser problem according to the directionality of gestures.There were 60 college students taking part in experiment 2,including 31 boys and 29 girls.It was found that the gesture group was significantly higher than the clap group in the success rate of space problem solving,at the same time,it was significantly less than the clap group in the number of attempts.Experiment 3 made use of the descriptive and simulatory function of gestures to investigate whether thesimulated gesture of the opponent image can solve the 17 animals problem.There were 66 college students participating in Experiment 3,in which the ratio of male to female was 1:1.The result showed that that the gesture simulation group has a significantly higher success rate than the clap group.Finally,the main conclusions are as follows:(1)The gestures consistent with the problem-solving can induce the solution of the spatial insight problem,and verify the prototype heuristic effect of the matching gestures on insight problem-solving.(2)The angle simulation gesture can be used as the key heuristic information to solve the six sticks insight problems.The alternating "V" shape and inverted "V" glyph gestures can be used as the key heuristic for the tumor-laser insight problem.Imitation of the shadow can be used as the key heuristic for the 17 animal insight problem.(3)Embodied actions(gestures)promote the solution of the spatial insight problem and verifies the embodied effect of the insight problem solving.(4)There are individual differences in solving the spatial insight problem which involves the key embodied inspirational information.Not all in the gesture group could solve the problem successfully.(5)The promotion effect of the matching gestures on the solution of spatial insight problem was implicit.