Event Title
A Show of Hands: What Does Gesture Tell Us About Emotion and Memory?
Location
Parker-Reed, SSWAC
Start Date
1-5-2014 1:00 PM
End Date
1-5-2014 2:00 PM
Project Type
Poster- Restricted to Campus Access
Description
Representative gestures have been shown to facilitate event recall, and negative emotional information has been found to distort memory. The present study synthesizes these two concepts in order to examine the effect of gestures on recall of emotional information. Children were verbally presented with either six or twelve letters, each with a corresponding word and representative gesture. Half of these items were positive and half were negative. Then children were verbally cued with each stimuli letter and asked to recall the corresponding word. Those in the gesture condition were encouraged to use the gestures during recall; those in the non-gesture condition were prohibited from using their hands. Children correctly demonstrated a significantly greater proportion of gestures for negative words than for positive words. This main effect for valence suggests an alternate method for accessing negative memories that might otherwise be irretrievable.
Sponsoring Department
Colby College. Psychology Dept.
CLAS Field of Study
Social Sciences
Event Website
http://www.colby.edu/clas
ID
49
A Show of Hands: What Does Gesture Tell Us About Emotion and Memory?
Parker-Reed, SSWAC
Representative gestures have been shown to facilitate event recall, and negative emotional information has been found to distort memory. The present study synthesizes these two concepts in order to examine the effect of gestures on recall of emotional information. Children were verbally presented with either six or twelve letters, each with a corresponding word and representative gesture. Half of these items were positive and half were negative. Then children were verbally cued with each stimuli letter and asked to recall the corresponding word. Those in the gesture condition were encouraged to use the gestures during recall; those in the non-gesture condition were prohibited from using their hands. Children correctly demonstrated a significantly greater proportion of gestures for negative words than for positive words. This main effect for valence suggests an alternate method for accessing negative memories that might otherwise be irretrievable.
https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2014/program/84