Thinking - it's all in the wrist.
Or the elbow thrust, the wink, even the head bob.
Researchers are starting to believe that the ways people think and remember have a great deal to do with what their bodies are doing.
Certainly the chicken head-esque "OK" sign and the "talk to the hand" palm flash lend themselves to memory. But even the careless hand wave might influence memory.
It turned out to get more than a pat on the back for David Organiscak.
The 16-year-old junior was part of the Burkburnett High School sweep at this year's Red River Regional Science and Engineering Fair. He's headed to international competition in Portland, Ore., along with his project that looked at how gestures influence memory.
Organiscak's experiment reinforces basic research that might lead to better therapies for speech disorders, said Ezequiel Morsella, a post doctorate fellow in the Yale University psychology department.
The motions people make while talking might actually be a way that their minds process data, which could help explain how memory works.
"There's two types of learners: visual and audio," he said. "I'm combining both so it's more appealing."
His setup was simple: He made two video recordings that were each about a minute long. On each, he would recite lists of words. He'd say "hello," "I" and "push" on one recording, and then say "goodbye," "freeze" and "pull" on the second. But on the second recording, each word had a corresponding movement - a tug-of-war motion with "pull" or wrapping his arms around his torso as he said "freeze."
Organiscak then got 20 students and 16 teachers to view a recording and write down as many of the words as they could remember in two minutes. Then he repeated the process with the second recording. He found that the gestured recording garnered many more responses than its counterpart.
"There's a big difference in the two," he said. "It was significantly better when using hand motions."
More than anything, Organiscak wanted to look at better ways to talk to people.
"I thought hand motions would affect your memory," he said. "I noticed a lot of great speakers always use hand motions more."
His data falls in line with other studies stretching back to the 1930s. It points to a changing view of the mind, Morsella said.
"It is very difficult to keep an idea in your head. This is like a self-generated cue," he said. "It's not like you have a photograph. It's a very active process whenever you use memory."
Most folks think that remembering something is simply a matter of the brain flipping through the right secretarial cabinet file drawer. But a MacGyver-view seems more in line with research: the mind cobbles together different aspects of an event - true actions and interpretations of what people think must have happened - to reconstruct a memory.
Memory has roughly two categories, said Michael Gardner, educational psychology professor at the University of Utah.
The first is called declarative memory and deals with knowing facts, such as what a bicycle is or knowing the colors of the rainbow. Actually knowing how to ride a bike depends on the second category of memory, called procedural.
Unlike the secretary-view of recall, MacGyver's view of memory grabs what's around and builds the thought. False information can creep in. This can be problematic, for instance, if eyewitnesses talk about what they've seen with other eyewitnesses or are baited by investigators.
"What they're really remembering are bits and pieces someone else told them," he said.
The theory holds with a view of mental imagery espoused by Donald Olding Hebb, an influential Canadian psychologist in the 1930s and '40s. He thought that eye movements and other motions people made while trying to conjure a mental image helped form that image.
Such work has handed Morsella an even more counterintuitive notion: perhaps the stuff people have determines the things they do. Looking at unconscious responses such as flicking on a light without thinking about it, he theorizes that the items actually unconsciously activate people to do certain things.
"Looking at the hammer primes you to prepare to use it," he said.
It all touches on a theory gaining wider acceptance: the brain and body are not separate entities.
"There's more of a liaison between the mind and body," Morsella said.
Organiscak seems to have put that thought to work.
"I thought there would be a lot of work" for the project, he said. "I was right on the mark."
Medical reporter Michael Hines can be reached at (940) 720-3456 or by email at hinesm@timesrecordnews.com
)
