How to expand and contract the current selection in Edit mode? I watched a video of somebody selecting more vertices/edges/faces using the &lt; and > signs in edit mode. He would select one face then using the > sign it would select more connected faces.  

The problem is I'm on a Mac and those two keys are under the , and . that will also no work using the the shift key.
Is there another shortcut to do this?
The key combinations to expand and contract the selection are CtrlNumpad + (to expand) and CtrlNumpad - (to contract). Like this:
  

Note: I'm not using an English keyboard, and the &lt; and > may work on an English keyboard. I honestly don't know