Recent theories suggest alternatives to the commonly held belief that the sole role of gestures is to communicate meaning directly to listeners. Evidence suggests that gestures may serve a cognitive function for speakers, possibly acting as lexical primes. We observed that participants gestured more often when describing a picture from memory than when the picture was present and that gestures were not influenced by manipulating eye contact of a listener. We argue that spatial imagery serves a short-term memory function during lexical search and that gestures may help maintain spatial images. When spatial imagery is not necessary, as in conditions of direct visual stimulation, reliance on gestures is reduced or eliminated.
Accounts of popular paranormal phenomena can serve as an ideal medium in which to encourage students to develop their critical’ thinking skills. This article describes a cooperative-learning approach used to teach critical thinking in a course on paranormal events. Critical-thinking skills increased; the course and many of its components received high student ratings.
Recent studies show that those who perform poorly on sporting activities involving targets recall the target as smaller than do better performers. Some have attributed the effect to action-specific perception, suggesting perception is influenced directly by how one interacts with an object. We proposed that underestimation of target size may instead serve as a justification for poor performance. We found that inaccurate dart throwers, given an excuse that the darts were of poor quality, were less likely to recall the target as smaller. The findings extend research indicating that perception is influenced by motivational factors, and provide further evidence that size estimates can be distorted by memory errors.
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