After observing bilingual children telling stories and discovering that stories told in the children's dominant language involved more hand gestures, University of Alberta researchers have concluded that hand gestures help you remember and articulate past events:
"What we think is going on here," Nicoladis said, "is that the very fact of moving your hands around helps you recall parts of the story–the gestures help you access memory and language so that you can tell more of the story."
"Initially, we thought gestures were related to meaning–that they meant something on their own. But now we believe they are more related to language," she added.
