Actions speak louder than words : the production and enactment effects on recall and recognition memory of verbs

This study aimed to investigate the effects of gestural and verbal production of single verbs on memory and expected to find that the physical embodiment of verbs via miming would significantly increase memory retention. It was also expected that gesturing verbs while speaking them aloud would lead to significantly more produced verbs being remembered than when they were only gestured. 12 participants (6 female; 1 left-handed) aged 18-27 were recruited from the University of Tasmania and via snowball sampling and were randomly assigned to either the gesture only group, or the gesture/spoken group, where they studied 80 verbs coloured blue or white which indicated whether to produce or silently read the words. Contrary to what was expected, there were no significant between subject effects, suggesting no benefit to vocalising verbs whilst performing them as gestures. However, there were extremely large within subject effects, suggesting that mimed performance of verbs significantly increases memory. These results suggest that the enactment of verbs leads to significant memory benefit, while the addition of speaking aloud verbs may not lead to any additional effect. However, further investigation is necessary to address the study's limitations.