Gesture as a window onto children’s number knowledge

Gunderson, Elizabeth A.; Spaepen, Elizabet; Gibson, Dominic J.; Goldin‐Meadow, Susan; Levine, Susan C.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.07.008

Cited by 69 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…How children overcome these challenges and ultimately learn the meanings of number words remains an open question. At the same time that children are learning the meanings of number words, they commonly learn how to gesture about numbers (e.g., hold up three fingers to indicate “three”), and there is evidence that labeling sets with number gestures may be easier for children than labeling the same sets with number words (Gunderson, Spaepen, Gibson, Goldin‐Meadow, & Levine, ). Accordingly, a growing body of research is focused on how such number gestures may be related to children's acquisition of symbolic number language (for reviews, see Di Luca & Presenti, ; Goldin‐Meadow, Levine, & Jacobs, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Number gestures predict learning of number words

Gibson

Gunderson

Spaepen

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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When asked to explain their solutions to a problem, children often gesture and, at times, these gestures convey information that is different from the information conveyed in speech. Children who produce these gesture‐speech “mismatches” on a particular task have been found to profit from instruction on that task. We have recently found that some children produce gesture‐speech mismatches when identifying numbers at the cusp of their knowledge, for example, a child incorrectly labels a set of two objects with the word “three” and simultaneously holds up two fingers. These mismatches differ from previously studied mismatches (where the information conveyed in gesture has the potential to be integrated with the information conveyed in speech) in that the gestured response contradicts the spoken response. Here, we ask whether these contradictory number mismatches predict which learners will profit from number‐word instruction. We used the Give‐a‐Number task to measure number knowledge in 47 children (Mage = 4.1 years, SD = 0.58), and used the What's on this Card task to assess whether children produced gesture‐speech mismatches above their knower level. Children who were early in their number learning trajectories (“one‐knowers” and “two‐knowers”) were then randomly assigned, within knower level, to one of two training conditions: a Counting condition in which children practiced counting objects; or an Enriched Number Talk condition containing counting, labeling set sizes, spatial alignment of neighboring sets, and comparison of these sets. Controlling for counting ability, we found that children were more likely to learn the meaning of new number words in the Enriched Number Talk condition than in the Counting condition, but only if they had produced gesture‐speech mismatches at pretest. The findings suggest that numerical gesture‐speech mismatches are a reliable signal that a child is ready to profit from rich number instruction and provide evidence, for the first time, that cardinal number gestures have a role to play in number‐learning.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Number gestures predict learning of number words

Gibson

Gunderson

Spaepen

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

Self Cite

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“…Children will begin to reference items in gesture when they are on the verge of being able to produce those items in speech, and they produce supplemental speech+gesture combinations (i.e., pointing to a cup and saying “daddy” to mean “daddy's cup”) right before they begin to create two-word utterances in spoken language (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). Finally, children who have not yet learned all of their number words are more accurate when labeling sets of items in gesture than in speech (Gunderson, Spaepen, Gibson, Goldin-Meadow, & Levine, 2015). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning from Gesture: How Our Hands Change Our Minds

2015

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When people talk, they gesture, and those gestures often reveal information that cannot be found in speech. Learners are no exception. A learner's gestures can index moments of conceptual instability, and teachers can make use of those gestures to gain access into a student's thinking. Learners can also discover novel ideas from the gestures they produce during a lesson, or from the gestures they see their teachers produce. Gesture thus has the power not only to reflect a learner's understanding of a problem, but also to change that understanding. This review explores how gesture supports learning across development, and ends by offering suggestions for ways in which gesture can be recruited in educational settings.

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“…6 The forms in (8) may also be mapped to finger configurations that are used to indicate number (e.g., raising the index and middle fingers to mean 'two'). Gunderson et al (2015) present evidence that children's grasp of finger gestures for number precedes learning of numerals. Their result can be taken to point to the role that the representation in (8) plays in connecting a number concept to the corresponding count sequence in (7b).…”

Section: Akira Watanabementioning

confidence: 69%

Natural language and set-theoretic conception of natural number

Watanabe

2017

Acta Linguistica Academica

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This article presents a new theory of simplex numerals that incorporates a slight revision of Chomsky's (2008) set-theoretic conception of natural number, which assumes that the notion of natural number is innate. The new theory makes it possible to account for the behavior of numerals in counting as well as the developmental stages that children go through in learning numerals. The key idea is that set-theoretic objects corresponding to natural number notions are subject to operations that apply when a syntactic object is converted to phonological form. These operations provide a crucial link that connects the meaning of a numeral with the count list consisting of numerals. A notable feature of the proposed analysis is that the Cardinal Principle is derived by recruiting linguistic computation and therefore is no longer stipulated as such.

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Gesture as a window onto children’s number knowledge

Cited by 69 publications

References 52 publications

Number gestures predict learning of number words

Number gestures predict learning of number words

Learning from Gesture: How Our Hands Change Our Minds

Natural language and set-theoretic conception of natural number

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