Italians and Dutch Use Same Gestures When Teaching Children

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and international collaborators found that Italians and Dutch share the same instinctive gestures when teaching children ^[1].

The discovery challenges long-held assumptions about the cultural specificity of hand movements. By comparing educators from two vastly different linguistic backgrounds, the study suggests that certain forms of non-verbal communication are rooted in human cognition rather than local tradition ^[1].

The comparative study focused on teachers in Italy and the Netherlands to investigate whether cultural differences influence how adults communicate with children in educational settings ^[1], ^[2]. While Italian culture is often stereotyped as being more gesturally expressive than Dutch culture, the data revealed a shared instinctive approach when the goal is instruction ^[2].

This research suggests that the physical movements used to convey information to children are not merely cultural markers; they are tools for cognitive processing. The findings indicate that when teachers explain concepts, they rely on a universal set of gestural patterns to aid student understanding ^[1], ^[3].

The study was published in May 2026 ^[3]. The team analyzed how these movements correlate with speech and how they help bridge the gap between abstract concepts and a child's comprehension ^[1]. By isolating the teaching context, the researchers were able to separate social gestures from instructional gestures ^[2].

This suggests that the human brain may be hardwired to use specific physical movements to facilitate learning, regardless of the native language spoken by the teacher or the student ^[1], ^[3].