alt Hacker NewsAnd here I was thinking that maybe there's something unique about Italians and Dutch way of explaining things to children... but this study was done only on Dutch and Italians. There were no other nationalities/cultures tested for comparison. Maybe if we tested all/most cultures we'd see the same patterns of using hands to explain things to children. Low signal.
They chose those two particular groups for a reason.
> "The two groups were chosen because previous research suggests Italians come from a more 'gesture-rich' culture, while Dutch speakers tend to use fewer representational gestures overall."
They took two very dissimilar groups when it comes to hand gestures.