We know that spicing up a learning activity by adding movement can enhance student memory—pairing the word “airplane” with pretending to be one, for example—but do we know by how much?

In a 2022 meta-analysis—the most comprehensive to date on the topic—researchers combed through 183 studies across the last six decades to find the answer. It’s a larger-than-expected bonus: Acting out a word while saying it has an effect size of 1.23, making it a “reliable and effective mnemonic tool” to promote learning, pushing it well above the 0.8 threshold for a “large” impact.

Inside the brain, cutting-edge neuroimaging technology reveals how combining words and actions generates a more durable network of memory traces in the brain. “As a rule of thumb, the more modalities implicated, the better memory will be,” the researchers conclude.