Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We investigated the role of speech-accompanying gestures inanalogical problem solving. Participants attempted to solveDuncker’s (1945) Radiation Problem after reading and retelling astory that described an analogous solution in a different domain.Participants were instructed to gesture, instructed not to gesture, orgiven no instructions regarding gesture as they retold the story.Participants who were instructed to gesture as they retold theanalogous story were more likely to mention perceptual details intheir description and less likely to apply the analogous solution tothe problem than participants who were instructed not to gesture.These results suggest that gestures can be detrimental to analogousproblem solving when the perceptual elements of a story areirrelevant to its schematic similarity with a problem.