Are we smarter with our hands? Relations between gesturing and fluid intelligence

We all struggle to remember things. Much research shows that mental imagery is an effective encoding mnemonic, and more recently, research investigating gesturing shows it has a facilatory effect on learning when used unintentionally. We tested whether learners\' high versus low spontaneous gesture rate and fluid intelligence modulated learning strategy effectiveness. We found that higher fluid intelligence produced better memory accuracy, but gesture rate had no main effect. High gesturers did perform marginally better with the gesturing strategy than without, but this benefit was not reliable. Our results suggest that the assigned memory strategies are the critical issue, and we propose that the gestures participants have to produce intentionally are difficult.