Abstract Technological advancements offer new possibilities of interacting with learning materials, including the use of gestures and body movements. The present study addressed the question of how using one's body to enact movements whilst learning about them would affect outcomes. 85 participants were shown either sequences of photographs or videos of fishes deploying different locomotion patterns for propulsion. Half of the participants in each visualization condition were prompted to enact the movements whilst learning. During learning, all participants were asked to rate their mental effort; moreover, their enactments were videotaped and later coded with respect to their frequency of occurrence and their congruency with the actual fish locomotion. After the learning phase, students were asked to classify fish based on their locomotion behavior as well as to describe fish showing familiar and unfamiliar locomotion behaviors to assess learning outcomes. Results showed that – independent of visualization format – being asked to enact the fish movements had a positive effect on the students' ability to classify fish as long as the locomotion behavior was neither too easy nor too difficult to be recognized. It did not affect the ability to describe fish movements. The frequency of enactments and their congruency were unrelated to learning outcomes. Taken together, the effects of enactments in this study appear to be limited to certain tasks. Furthermore, they are likely to be due to enhancing engagement in the learning rather than to mechanisms specific to enacting body movements.

中文翻译：

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“现在像那条鱼一样移动”：表演能帮助学习者理解照片和视频中呈现的动态运动吗？

摘要 技术进步提供了与学习材料交互的新可能性，包括手势和身体动作的使用。本研究解决了一个问题，即在了解动作的同时如何使用身体来进行动作会影响结果。向 85 名参与者展示了鱼的照片或视频序列，这些鱼采用不同的运动模式进行推进。每个可视化条件下的一半参与者被提示在学习的同时进行动作。在学习过程中，所有参与者都被要求评价他们的脑力劳动；此外，他们的行为被录像，然后根据其发生频率和与实际鱼类运动的一致性进行编码。学习阶段结束后，要求学生根据它们的运动行为对鱼进行分类，并描述鱼表现出熟悉和不熟悉的运动行为，以评估学习成果。结果表明——独立于可视化格式——被要求制定鱼的运动对学生对鱼进行分类的能力有积极的影响，只要运动行为既不太容易也不太难被识别。它不影响描述鱼类运动的能力。颁布的频率及其一致性与学习成果无关。综上所述，本研究中制定的影响似乎仅限于某些任务。此外，它们可能是由于增强了学习的参与度，而不是特定于制定身体运动的机制。