ABSTRACT

In this study, adults naïve to organic chemistry drew stereoisomers of molecules and explained their drawings. From these explanations, we identified nine strategies that participants expressed during those explanations. Five of the nine strategies referred to properties of the molecule that were explanatorily irrelevant to solving the problem; the remaining four referred to properties that were explanatorily relevant to the solution. For each problem, we tallied which of the nine strategies were expressed within the explanation for that problem and determined whether the strategy was expressed in speech only, gesture only, or in both speech and gesture within the explanation. After these explanations, all participants watched the experimenter deliver a 2-minute training module on stereoisomers. Following the training, participants repeated the drawing + explanation task on six new problems. The number of relevant strategies that participants expressed in speech (alone or with gesture) before training did not predict their post-training scores. However, the number of relevant strategies participants expressed in gesture only before training did predict their post-training scores. Conveying relevant information about stereoisomers uniquely in gesture prior to a brief training is thus a good index of who is most likely to learn from the training. We suggest that gesture reveals explanatorily relevant implicit knowledge that reflects (and perhaps even promotes) acquisition of new understanding.

摘要

在这项研究中，不懂有机化学的成年人画出了分子的立体异构体并解释了他们的图画。从这些解释中，我们确定了参与者在这些解释中表达的九种策略。九种策略中有五种提到与解决问题无关的分子特性。其余四个是与说明相关的属性解决方案。对于每个问题，我们统计了在该问题的解释中表达的九种策略中的哪一种，并确定了该策略是在解释中仅以语音，仅手势还是以语音和手势两者表达。经过这些解释后，所有参与者都观看了实验者提供的有关立体异构体的2分钟培训课程。培训结束后，参与者对六个新问题重复了绘画和解释任务。参与者在培训之前以语音（单独或手势）表达的相关策略数量无法预测其培训后分数。然而，相关的战略参与者的数量表示手势只有训练前做预测他们的训练后分数。因此，在简短的培训之前就以手势方式唯一地传达有关立体异构体的相关信息，这是谁最有可能从培训中学习的好指标。我们建议，手势应揭示说明性的相关隐性知识，这些隐性知识反映（甚至可能促进）获得新的理解。