Just Dance: Does Language Guide Action Learning? R Code

Here, you will find HTML files and the R code files that were used to analyze the data from experiment 1 and 2 from the study "Just Dance: Does Language Guide Action Learning?" A description of this study can be read below. When learning something new, the presence of an accompanying novel verbal label can facilitate the learning process. This label advantage effect has been established in perception-based learning studies on objects, smells, and tactile patterns. However, the effect of labels on how we learn to perceive and perform novel actions remains unexplored. This study investigates whether the presence of labels during learning facilitates both the performance and memorization of novel actions across two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants (n=297) learned four novel dance sequences in one of three learning conditions (novel verbal label, handshape label, or no label), after which they completed a performance and a memory test. Results showed that participants who received no accompanying labels during learning outperformed those who received verbal or handshape labels, both in the memory and the performance test. In Experiment 2, participants (n=105) learned the same four novel dance sequences in the same three conditions, but the embodiment component was removed from the procedure. Participants did not actively carry out the dance sequences; they simply viewed the videos and completed only the memory test. Experiment 2 showed opposite results; participants from the label conditions outperformed participants who received no labels. Together, these results suggest that the emergence of a label advantage effect for action learning may depend on whether learning involves active bodily movements. Learning how to carry out novel actions with the body may require different cognitive mechanisms than learning how to perceive those same novel actions, which might impact the potential advantage of labels for learning. These findings raise questions about the nature of actions and the interplay between action learning and labelling, opening up uncharted lines of research in these domains.