The integration of gestures and pictures into pedagogy has demonstrated potential for improving adults' learning of foreign language (L2) vocabulary. However, the relative benefits of gestures and pictures on children's L2 vocabulary learning have not been formally evaluated. In three experiments, we investigated the effects of gesture-based and…

Language and gesture are viewed as highly interdependent systems. Besides supporting communication, gestures also have an impact on memory for verbal information compared to pure verbal encoding in native but also in foreign language learning. This article presents a within-subject longitudinal study lasting 14 months that tested the use of…

It has previously been demonstrated that enactment (i.e., performing representative gestures during encoding) enhances memory for concrete words, in particular action words. Here, we investigate the impact of enactment on abstract word learning in a foreign language. We further ask if learning novel words with gestures facilitates sentence…