From children's hands to adults' ears: Gesture's role in the learning process.

Abstract

Children can express thoughts in gesture that they do not express in speech--they produce gesture-speech mismatches. Moreover, children who produce mismatches on a given task are particularly ready to learn that task. Gesture, then, is a tool that researchers can use to predict who will profit from instruction. But is gesture also useful to adults who must decide how to instruct a particular child? We asked 8 adults to instruct 38 third- and fourth-grade children individually in a math problem. We found that the adults offered more variable instruction to children who produced mismatches than to children who produced no mismatches--more different types of instructional strategies and more instructions that contained two different strategies, one in speech and the other in gesture. The children thus appeared to be shaping their own learning environments just by moving their hands. Gesture not only reflects a child's understanding but can play a role in eliciting input that could shape that understanding. As such, it may be part of the mechanism of cognitive change.

Children Learn When Their Teacher's Gestures and Speech Differ

“…mismatches in their instruction when teaching children who are on the cusp of learning the task (Goldin-Meadow & Singer, 2003). But just because mismatches are found in teaching situations does not mean they are good for learning.…”

A word in the hand: action, gesture and mental representation in humans and non-human primates

“…For example, listeners are more likely to grasp the message conveyed in speech if it is accompanied by a gesture conveying the same message as speech than if it is accompanied by no gesture at all. Conversely, listeners are less likely to grasp the message conveyed in speech if it is accompanied by a gesture conveying a different message than if it is accompanied by no gesture at all [26,27]. But gesture goes beyond modulating the listener's comprehension of speech-it can convey information on its own.…”

“…But gesture goes beyond modulating the listener's comprehension of speech-it can convey information on its own. For example, listeners can extract information from gesture even if that information is not found anywhere in the accompanying speech [26,27]. Not surprisingly, since gesture forms an integrated system with the speech it accompanies, gestures produced in the context of speech are often difficult to interpret when presented in an experimental situation without speech [28].…”

When Gesture Is and Is Not Language

“…This phenomenon is robust, found in learners of all ages on a wide variety of tasks taught by an experimenter: 5-to 9-year-olds learning a balance task (Pine, Lufkin, and Messer 2004); 9-to 10-year-olds learning a math task (Perry, Church, and Goldin-Meadow 1988;Alibali and Goldin-Meadow 1993); and adults learning a gears task (Perry and Elder 1996). The phenomenon is also found in naturalistic learning situations: toddlers learning their first word combinations (Goldin-Meadow and Butcher 2003, Iverson and Goldin-Meadow 2005, Ozcaliskan and Goldin-Meadow 2005; and school-aged children learning a mathematical concept from a teacher (Goldin-Meadow and Singer 2003).…”

“…Interestingly, the teachers did give different types of instruction to children who produced mismatches than to children who produced only matches. They used more different types of spoken strategies and more of their own gesture-speech mismatches when teaching children who produced mismatches (Goldin-Meadow and Singer 2003), and the…”