Learning and instruction

Tactile Participation

The use of the hands and body as active tools for discovering and understanding the material and sensorial world

Sensory Ethnography

A research method focused on the use of the senses—such as touch—to explore and document the worlds of participants

La prise

A term used by Merleau-Ponty meaning 'grip' or 'hold' to denote how the body responds to and understands its environment

En prise

A term meaning 'in gear' or 'attuned to' referring to the body's tendency to maximize understanding of a particular context

Maximum Grip

The bodily tendency to achieve the most clear and effective interaction with a given situation or environment

Ready-to-hand

Heidegger’s term for equipment and entities that become appropriate and fit for purpose through practical use

Bodily Know-how

An understanding rooted in practical involvement and physical action rather than just theoretical knowledge

Positionality

The specific physical or social stance a researcher takes to optimize their understanding of a subject's world

Reflexivity

The process of a researcher reflecting on how their own presence and bodily actions influence the study

Tactile Understanding

Knowledge gained through the sense of touch and the physical manipulation of objects in a specific setting

Aviation Expertise

A form of mastery that involves not just technical skill but a moral and practical "feel" for the aircraft through the hands

Sensorial Methods

Research techniques that prioritize sensory data—like sound

Co-speech gesture

Spontaneous hand movements that are informationally and temporally well-coordinated with concurrent speech

Temporal coordination

The synchronization of gesture and speech evidenced by both stopping simultaneously in individuals who stutter

Common computational stage

The theoretical argument that speech and gesture production processes share a single underlying mental origin

Syntactic encoding

The process of arranging words into a grammatical structure which influences the timing and form of gestures

Linguistic packaging

The way a speaker chooses to frame an event in language which can be "tight" (one clause) or "loose" (multiple clauses)

Spatio-motoric properties

The physical characteristics of an action (like causality) that influence how it is represented in a gesture

The Iconicity Principle

The rule that if two actions are causally linked in the real world they should be represented simultaneously in a gesture

Path

The trajectory or direction of a movement which is often prioritized in storytelling over the manner of movement

Manner

The specific way an action is performed (e.g. rotating while falling) which may be expressed separately from the path

Action Generator

The mental system responsible for prioritizing which information (Path vs. Manner) is physically encoded in a gesture

Redundancy Rule

The tendency of the brain to avoid "double-encoding" the same information physically if it has already been represented in a previous gesture

Communicative accuracy

The social pressure felt by a speaker to make their gestures match the real-world timing of an event for the listener

Interface factors

The "cocktail" of ingredients—linguistic packaging

Ontogenesis of gesture

The development of co-speech gesture in humans which occurs even without visual input as seen in congenitally blind individuals

Speech fluency

The finding that prohibiting hand gestures can cause a speaker’s verbal output to become less smooth or fragmented

Cognitive control

A set of top-down cognitive processes often called executive functions that allow the regulation of attention and behavior

Executive Functions (EF)

Core processes including working memory inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility

Academic Achievement (AA)

The level of school-based success which is strongly associated with individual differences in cognitive control

Neurobiological hypothesis

The theory that regular physical activity encourages changes in the central nervous system such as the formation of new neurons

Metabolic demands

The physiological requirements of physical effort moderated by the dose of activity such as frequency and intensity

Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity (MVPA)

A level of physical exertion that has been shown to provide specific benefits for mathematics achievement

Aerobic Physical Activity

Continuous physical movement that improves cardiorespiratory fitness and specifically benefits executive functions

Enriched Physical Activity

Programmes that scaffold practices to match a child's level and have shown small beneficial effects for language

On-task behavior

The ability to stay focused on a specific classroom activity which showed the largest benefit from physical activity interventions

Fluid intelligence

The capacity to reason and solve new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge

Working memory

The system responsible for temporarily holding and processing information during complex cognitive tasks

Inhibitory control

The cognitive process that permits an individual to inhibit their impulses and natural responses to select a more appropriate behavior

Cognitive flexibility

The mental ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts or to think about multiple concepts simultaneously

Hot EF processes

Executive functions that involve an emotional or motivational component often reflecting real-world decision-making contexts

Dose-response relationship

The connection between the amount of physical activity (frequency and duration) and the magnitude of the cognitive benefit

Embodied Cognition (EC)

The theoretical claim that an organism's neural and extra-neural body processes and its environmental coupling play a fundamental role in cognition

Phenomenology and Pragmatism

The philosophical roots of embodied cognition which emphasize lived experience and practical action over abstract computation

Standard Computationalism

The "neuro-centric" view of the mind that embodied cognition often opposes by looking beyond the brain

B-formatted representations

Mental representations that use body-related codes such as somatosensory or motor formats to process information

Interoceptive processes

Representations of one's own internal bodily states and activities such as heart rate or visceral sensations

Mirror Neurons

Neurons that activate both when an agent performs an intentional action and when they observe another agent performing that same action

Reuse Hypothesis

The evolutionary idea that neural circuits originally established for bodily functions can be redeployed for higher-order cognitive purposes

Extra-neural body

Physical aspects of the body outside the brain—such as limbs and sensory organs—that shape how we perceive and think

Environmental Coupling

The dynamic interaction and feedback loop between an organism and its surrounding world

Proprioceptive information

The sense or representation of the position and movement of one’s own muscles joints and limbs

Kinesthetic information

The internal sensory input regarding the body's motion and physical weight during activity

Non-representationalism

A radical branch of embodied cognition that suggests some cognitive tasks do not require internal mental maps or symbols

Somatosensory representations

Neural encodings associated with physiological conditions like pain temperature and touch

Cognitive sectors

Different domains of thought (such as language or memory) that vary in how deeply they involve the physical body

Evolutionary time frame

The context used to explain how the brain "recycles" old motor systems to support modern abstract thinking

Gesture Use and Processing

The study of how individuals vary in their frequency and saliency of hand movements during encoding and learning

External sources of variation

Factors such as speech content

Internal sources of variation

Individual characteristics like personality

Gesture-as-a-compensation-tool

The account arguing that individuals with lower cognitive resources use gestures more to manage cognitive load

Visual-spatial cognitive resources

The mental abilities required to process and comprehend gestures

Cognitive Load Management

The use of gestures to offload mental effort when task demands exceed an individual's internal cognitive capacity

Healthy Aging

A stage of life where a decrease in gesture production may occur due to impaired mental imagery or visual-spatial skills

Gesture-Speech Integration

The coordinated manner in which hand movements and verbal output express meaning together

Encoding and Learning

The processes by which a speaker benefits from producing gestures while thinking or explaining complex ideas

Processing and Comprehension

The acts of attending to and understanding a speaker's gestures from the listener's perspective

Within-group variation

The differences in gesture behavior found among individuals who share similar external circumstances or demographics

Individual Differences

The unique cognitive dispositions that determine how much a person benefits from using or seeing gestures

Cognitive Load Theory (CLT)

An instructional theory based on human cognitive architecture that focuses on the load placed on working memory

Transient Information Effect

The decrease in learning that occurs when permanent written instructions are replaced by fleeting spoken information

Modality Effect

The learning advantage gained when written text is replaced by audio information that refers to a visual map or diagram

Long-term Memory (LTM)

A vast store of information where schemas are held after they have been processed

Information Store Principle

The concept that humans possess a massive amount of information in LTM that governs our behavior

Borrowing and Reorganizing Principle

The idea that most information in LTM is obtained from others through imitation or reading

Randomness as Genesis Principle

The process of using a random "generate and test" method to solve problems when no LTM schema is available

Narrow Limits of Change Principle

The limitation of working memory that prevents LTM from being changed too rapidly with novel information

Environmental Organizing Linking Principle

The process where LTM information is transferred to working memory to guide actions in the environment

Working Memory (WM)

A system with limited capacity and duration used for the conscious processing of new information

Redundancy Effect

The negative impact on learning when the same information is presented simultaneously in multiple forms like reading and listening

Split-attention Effect

The cognitive burden caused when a learner must integrate two or more separate sources of information to understand a concept

Intrinsic Cognitive Load

The inherent difficulty associated with a specific instructional topic or task

Extraneous Cognitive Load

Unnecessary mental effort caused by the way information is presented rather than the content itself

Germane Cognitive Load

The productive mental effort used to build and automate schemas in long-term memory

Audio-visual Presentation

A teaching method that combines spoken words with visual aids to leverage both the phonological and visuospatial systems

Complexity and Length

Factors that determine when the benefits of audio information reverse and written text becomes superior

Biologically Primary Knowledge

Knowledge that has evolved over generations for survival

Biologically Secondary Knowledge

Knowledge that is culturally important but not naturally evolved

Evolutionary Educational Psychology

A framework that explains why primary knowledge is acquired effortlessly while secondary knowledge requires explicit instruction

Information Store Principle

The requirement for a massive base of domain-specific knowledge in long-term memory to support complex thinking

Borrowing and Reorganizing Principle

The process of building long-term memory by imitating or being instructed by others

Randomness as Genesis Principle

The trial-and-error method used to solve problems when no prior schema exists in long-term memory

Narrow Limits of Change Principle

The constraint that working memory can only process a few new elements at a time to prevent overwhelming long-term memory

Environmental Organizing and Linking Principle

The use of long-term memory schemas to act effectively and automatically in specific environments

Expertise Reversal Effect

The phenomenon where instructional support that helps novices actually hinders learning for more experienced students

Element Interactivity

The degree to which different parts of a task must be processed simultaneously

Isolated Elements Effect

An instructional strategy of breaking complex information into parts to be learned individually before being combined

Goal-Free Effect

Reducing cognitive load by asking learners to find any possible value rather than focusing on a specific

Collective Working Memory Effect

The advantage of collaborative learning where a group shares the cognitive load of a task that exceeds individual capacity

Self-Management Effect

The benefit of teaching students how to manage their own cognitive load during learning