Department of Psychology, Koç University, Sarıyer, Istanbul, Turkey.
PLoS One. 2023 Apr 6;18(4):e0283859. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283859. eCollection 2023.
Using hand gestures benefits children's divergent thinking and enhances verbal improvisation in adults. In the present study, we asked whether gestures were also associated with convergent thinking by activating individuals' verbal lexicon and maintaining their visuospatial imagery. We tested young adults on verbal and visual convergent thinking, controlling for their mental imagery skills. Results showed that gestures and mental imagery skills play a role in verbal but not visual convergent thinking. Regardless of whether gestures were spontaneous or encouraged, we found a negative association between overall gesture frequency and verbal convergent thinking or individuals with low mental imagery, and a positive association for individuals with high mental imagery. Representational gestures benefited verbal convergent thinking for everyone except those who had low mental imagery and no experience with the task. Performing beat gestures hampered verbal convergent thinking in people with lower mental imagery capacity and helped those who had high mental imagery and previous experience with the task. We also found that gesturing can benefit people with lower verbal abilities on verbal convergent thinking, however, high spatial imagery abilities were required for gestures to boost verbal convergent thinking. The current study adds a new dimension to both the embodied creativity literature and the kaleidoscope of individual differences in gesture research.
使用手势有益于儿童发散思维的发展，并能提高成年人的言语即兴创作能力。在本研究中，我们通过激活个体的词汇和保持其视觉形象来研究手势是否也与聚合思维有关。我们对年轻人进行了言语和视觉聚合思维测试，同时控制了他们的心理意象技能。结果表明，手势和心理意象技能在言语聚合思维中起作用，但在视觉聚合思维中不起作用。无论手势是自发的还是被鼓励的，我们都发现整体手势频率与言语聚合思维之间呈负相关，与低心理意象个体呈负相关，而与高心理意象个体呈正相关。对于除了那些心理意象低且没有任务经验的人之外，代表性手势对每个人的言语聚合思维都有好处。在心理意象能力较低的人中，做节拍手势会阻碍言语聚合思维，而在心理意象较高且有任务经验的人中，做节拍手势则有助于言语聚合思维。我们还发现，手势可以帮助言语能力较低的人在言语聚合思维方面取得进步，但需要较高的空间意象能力才能使手势促进言语聚合思维。本研究为具身创造力文献和手势研究中的个体差异万花筒增添了新的维度。
