Pointing and Action: Performance Effects on Remembering

Depending on the task at hand, pointing has been shown to sometimes help, sometimes hinder, or to simply have no effect on learning and memory. In this study we directly compared the effects of pointing and action in two visuospatial memory tasks. Twenty-seven participants were asked to remember geometrical figures in three different conditions: 1) Visual Observation – e.g., looking at the figures, 2) Action – e.g., placing dots on the vertices of the figures, and 3) Pointing – e.g., pointing towards the vertices of the figures. Our results show that there is no significant difference in performance between pointing and action in recall and recognition of the geometrical figures nor did pointing for longer or shorter amounts of time affect performance. These results give direct evidence that pointing is not significantly different than action in this kind of visuospatial memory task. Our experiment did not directly involve language or problem solving but it did use stimuli that are not only coordinates but are also concrete forms. In this sense this study attempts to explore the boundaries between current research that has looked at pointing in the context of language and pointing independent of language. Although we predicted better performance for pointing in comparison to both visual observation and action we propose that the additional information that pointing may provide was not powerful enough to surpass and outperform the information acquired through visual observation and thus hindered performance. 1.