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Hand gestures support word learning in patients with hippocampal amnesia

Hand gestures support word learning in patients with hippocampal amnesia Co‐speech hand gesture facilitates learning and memory, yet the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting this remain unclear. One possibility is that motor information in gesture may engage procedural memory representations. Alternatively, iconic information from gesture may contribute to declarative memory representations mediated by the hippocampus. To investigate these alternatives, we examined gesture's effects on word learning in patients with hippocampal damage and declarative memory impairment, with intact procedural memory, and in healthy and in brain‐damaged comparison groups. Participants learned novel label‐object pairings while producing gesture, observing gesture, or observing without gesture. After a delay, recall and object identification were assessed. Unsurprisingly, amnesic patients were unable to recall the labels at test. However, they correctly identified objects at above chance levels, but only if they produced a gesture at encoding. Comparison groups performed well above chance at both recall and object identification regardless of gesture. These findings suggest that gesture production may support word learning by engaging nondeclarative (procedural) memory. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Hippocampus Wiley

Hand gestures support word learning in patients with hippocampal amnesia

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References (43)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
ISSN
1050-9631
eISSN
1098-1063
DOI
10.1002/hipo.22840
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Co‐speech hand gesture facilitates learning and memory, yet the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting this remain unclear. One possibility is that motor information in gesture may engage procedural memory representations. Alternatively, iconic information from gesture may contribute to declarative memory representations mediated by the hippocampus. To investigate these alternatives, we examined gesture's effects on word learning in patients with hippocampal damage and declarative memory impairment, with intact procedural memory, and in healthy and in brain‐damaged comparison groups. Participants learned novel label‐object pairings while producing gesture, observing gesture, or observing without gesture. After a delay, recall and object identification were assessed. Unsurprisingly, amnesic patients were unable to recall the labels at test. However, they correctly identified objects at above chance levels, but only if they produced a gesture at encoding. Comparison groups performed well above chance at both recall and object identification regardless of gesture. These findings suggest that gesture production may support word learning by engaging nondeclarative (procedural) memory.

Journal

HippocampusWiley

Published: Jan 1, 2018

Keywords: ; ; ;

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