Instructed Hand Movements Affect Students’ Learning of an Abstract Concept from Video

The two studies reported here investigate the impact of instructed hand movements on students’ subsequent understanding of a concept. Students were asked to watch an instructional video—focused on the concept of statistical model—three times. These two studies found that instructed hand movement—even when presented as an unrelated, secondary task—can affect students’ learning of a complex concept.This article was featured in Scientific American.