Do You See What I'm Saying? The Role of Gestures in Learning
Sometimes gestures are simply visual substitutes for speech: every child knows that a finger held to tightly closed lips means "be quiet"; that the thumbs-up sign means "okay." But we also gesture spontaneously as we talk, even on the telephone. Are these gestures meaningful, or are they just so much hand-waving? Recent research indicates that gestures do convey critical, often unspoken, information … In a 1998 study published in Nature, Goldin-Meadow and Indiana University researcher Jana Iverson showed that children and adolescents who had been blind since birth spontaneously gesture when they are speaking, even if they know that they are speaking to another blind person. "I think this really does suggest that gesture is an important part of the whole speaking game," Goldin-Meadow says.
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June 19, 2007 at 7:41 am
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