Emotion and gesture effects on narrative recall in young children and adults

Abstract

Research with children and adults suggests verbal references to negative emotion support narrative recall. To date, however, the effects of gesture on emotion recall have been ignored. Children (4-6 years) and adults viewed videos containing negatively valenced, positively valenced, and emotionally neutral stories. The narrator provided gestures reflecting the bodily state of the protagonist (negative emotion, positive emotion or neutral state), the main story event, or no gestures. Children and adults recalled more negative emotions than positive emotions or neutral states. For children, state gestures facilitated state-related recall, and event gestures facilitated event-related recall. For adults, state gestures did not impact recall, whereas event gestures weakened recall. For both age groups, gesture's benefits remained consistent across emotional valence. Results suggest emotional valence is not critical in determining whether viewing gestures facilitates narrative recall, with important implications for deciding how and when to use gestures to best assist listeners' recall.

Gesture use in L1-Turkish and L2-English: Evidence from emotional narrative retellings

“…Many brain-imaging studies have shown that emotions modulate action and motor-related brain areas, suggesting a close link between emotion and action (e.g., Kolesar et al, 2017; Kveraga et al, 2015; Meyer et al, 2019; Pichon et al, 2012; Portugal et al, 2020). Although some studies investigated emotion expression through body movements (e.g., Dael et al, 2013; Dittrich et al, 1996; Sawada et al, 2003; Zieber et al, 2014), very few of them narrowed their focus on different types of hand gestures’ role in emotion communication (e.g., Çatak et al, 2018; Guilbert et al, 2021). This study focused on hand gestures, and their roles in expressing emotions.…”