Susan Goldin-Meadow

Department of Psychology
University of Chicago

http://goldin-meadow-lab.uchicago.edu/

Friday, February 4

12:00-2:00 pm

How our hands help us think

When people talk, they gesture. We now know that these gestures are

associated with learning. They can index moments of cognitive

instability and reflect thoughts not yet found in speech. What I hope to

do in this talk is raise the possibility that gesture might do more than

just reflect learning -- it might be involved in the learning process

itself. I consider two non-mutually exclusive possibilities. First,

gesture could play a role in the learning process by displaying, for all

to see, the learner's newest, and perhaps undigested, thoughts. Parents,

teachers, and peers would then have the opportunity to react to those

unspoken thoughts and provide the learner with the input necessary for

future steps in mastering the problem. Second, gesture could play a role

in the learning process more directly by providing another

representational format, one that would allow the learner to explore,

perhaps with less effort, ideas that may be difficult to think through

in a verbal format. Thus gesture has the potential to contribute to

cognitive change directly by influencing the learner and indirectly by

influencing the learning environment.