Week 1, Blog Post #1

I pulled an article from the discussion post #2, that intrigued me. I appreciated the article found by a student called Hand Gestures Could Make Kids Smarter, from Time magazine. This article intrigued me because they mention, “Our study shows that young children’s gesturing can help them think,” according to Patricia Miller, professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. I've read a few studies that have proven moving around while obtaining new information helps the mind retain the information better. In a book, called The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine, M.D. (2010), there is discussion of a process known as embodied cognition. This is when specifically a child (males more so) use muscles and the nervous system together, to learn new information. The author sates that specifically males learn by hearing a new word and then activating their sensory and movement areas of the brain, in order to "embody, learn and remember the meaning of the word". She goes onto say that when little boys squirm in their seats, this activates the part of the brain that learns math fluidly. Scientists suggest embodied cognition is a more efficient way of learning because the muscles and body parts he uses to learn the action of a verb, for instance, will stay connected to that word. It may annoy teachers, but boys who squirm, learn efficiently. I relate this back the the article's point that moving around, as in hand gesturing, stimulates the brain's ability to generate ideas.