Exploring Individual Differences: A Case for Measuring Children's Spontaneous Gesture Production as a Predictor of Learning From Gesture Instruction

Decades of research have established that learners benefit when instruction includes hand gestures. This benefit is seen when learners watch an instructor gesture, as well as when they are taught or encouraged to gesture themselves. However, there is substantial individual variability with respect to this phenomenon-not all individuals benefit equally from gesture instruction. In the current paper, we explore the sources of this variability. First, we review the existing research on individual differences that do or do not predict learning from gesture instruction, including differences that are either context-dependent (linked to the particular task at hand) or context-independent (linked to the learner across multiple tasks). Next, we focus on one understudied measure of individual difference: the learner's own spontaneous gesture rate. We present data showing rates of "non-gesturers" across a number of studies and we provide theoretical motivation for why this is a fruitful area for future research. We end by suggesting ways in which research on individual differences will help gesture researchers to further refine existing theories and develop specific predictions about targeted gesture intervention for all kinds of learners. Instruction using hand gestures helps many, but not all, children learn new concepts. We review individual differences that predict who learns best from gesture and propose a novel measure to explain variability - whether or not the learner themselves produces spontaneous gesture.