The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

The implications of the Noices’ research are clear. First: information is better remembered when we’re moving as we learn it. This is the case even when the movement is not a literal enactment of the meaning of the information to be recalled but simply a movement of the body, meaningfully related to the information and made at the same time the information is absorbed. Second: information that has become associated with a movement is better remembered when we can reproduce that same movement later, when we’re calling it up from memory. This may be possible in some situations—for example, when giving a speech for which we have practiced accompanying gestures—but moving while learning is still beneficial even when those movements can’t be replicated at the point of recall (during an exam, for instance).