Gesture offers insight into problem-solving in adults and children

Garber, Philip; Goldin‐Meadow, Susan

doi:10.1016/s0364-0213(02)00087-3

Cited by 33 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The effects of explaining with gestures on subsequent performance (Switch and No-Switch conditions) are directly compared to a no-explanation control condition. A no-explanation condition rather than an explaining-without-gestures condition was chosen, as it has been shown that people routinely gesture when talking about solving the TOH task (Garber & Goldin-Meadow, 2002). Furthermore, in accordance with the pilot study conducted by Beilock and Goldin-Meadow (2010), we have observed that participants told not to gesture generally experience difficulties fully explaining their moves.…”

Section: Present Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 90%

In which direction to move? Facilitative and interference effects of gestures on problem solver's thinking

Wassenburg

Koning

Schoot

2018

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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Recent research shows that co-speech gestures can influence gesturers' thought. This line of research suggests that the influence of gestures is so strong, that it can wash out and reverse an effect of learning. We argue that these findings need a more robust and ecologically valid test, which we provide in this article. Our results support the claim that gestures not only reflect information in our mental representations, but can also influence gesturer's thought by adding action information to one's mental representation during problem solving (Tower of Hanoi). We show, however, that the effect of gestures on subsequent performance is not as strong as previously suggested.As opposed to what previous research indicates, gestures' facilitative effect through learning was not nullified by the potentially interfering effect on subsequent problemsolving performance of incompatible gestures. To conclude, using gestures during problem solving seems to provide more benefits than costs for task performance.

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Section: Present Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 90%

In which direction to move? Facilitative and interference effects of gestures on problem solver's thinking

Wassenburg

Koning

Schoot

2018

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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“…Under this alternative view, the mental representation containing weight was reflected in gesture, rather than caused by gesture. Previous work has found that participants (adults and children) asked to explain TOH with the disks present do gesture throughout their explanations (Garber & Goldin-Meadow, 2002). If we are correct that gesture leads to (as opposed to reflects) the construction of a mental representation containing weight, the gestures that adults produce in the presence of the TOH disks ought to have the same detrimental effect on TOH2 performance with switched disks as the gestures produced in the absence of the disks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is ample evidence that the production of these gestures reflects thought (Alibali, Bassok, Solomon, Syc & Goldin-Meadow, 1999; Garber & Goldin-Meadow, 2002; Cook & Tanenhaus, 2009), predicts changes in thought (Church & Goldin-Meadow, 1986; Alibali & Goldin-Meadow, 1993; Perry, Church & Goldin-Meadow, 1988; Ping, Decatur, Larson, Zinchenko & Goldin-Meadow, under review), and even elicits changes in thought (Broaders, Cook, Mitchell & Goldin-Meadow, 2007; Singer & Goldin-Meadow 2005; Goldin-Meadow, Cook & Mitchell 2009; Goldin-Meadow, Levine, Zinchenko, Yip, Hemani, & Factor, 2012). …”

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confidence: 99%

Gesturing has a larger impact on problem-solving than action, even when action is accompanied by words

Trofatter

Kontra

Beilock

et al. 2014

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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The coordination of speech with gesture elicits changes in speakers’ problem-solving behavior beyond the changes elicited by the coordination of speech with action. Participants solved the Tower of Hanoi puzzle (TOH1); explained their solution using speech coordinated with either Gestures (Gesture+Talk) or Actions (Action+Talk), or demonstrated their solution using Actions alone (Action); then solved the puzzle again (TOH2). For some participants (Switch group), disk weights during TOH2 were reversed (smallest = heaviest). Only in the Gesture+Talk Switch group did performance worsen from TOH1 to TOH2 – for all other groups, performance improved. In the Gesture+Talk Switch group, more one-handed gestures about the smallest disk during the explanation hurt subsequent performance, compared to all other groups. These findings contradict the hypothesis that gesture affects thought by promoting the coordination of task-relevant hand movements with task-relevant speech, and lend support to the hypothesis that gesture grounds thought in action via its representational properties.

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“…Speakers of all ages produce utterances in which gesture conveys information that is different from the information conveyed in speech (e.g. Stone, Webb & Mahootian, 1991 ;Alibali, Bassok, Olseth, Syc & Goldin-Meadow, 1999 ;Beattie & Shovelton, 1999 ;Garber & Goldin-Meadow, 2002). And even adults will produce many gesture+speech mismatches when they have not yet mastered a task and are in a state of transition (Perry & Elder, 1997).…”

Section: The Function Of Supplementary Gesture+speech Combinations Fomentioning

confidence: 99%

Do parents lead their children by the hand?

Özçalışkan

Goldin‐Meadow

2005

J. Child Lang.

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Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0305000905007002How to cite this article: SEYDA ÖZÇALISKAN and SUSAN . Do parents lead their children by the hand?. A B S T R A C TThe types of gesture+speech combinations children produce during the early stages of language development change over time. This change, in turn, predicts the onset of two-word speech and thus might reflect a cognitive transition that the child is undergoing. An alternative, however, is that the change merely reflects changes in the types of gesture+speech combinations that their caregivers produce. To explore this possibility, we videotaped 40 American child-caregiver dyads in their homes for 90 minutes when the children were 1;2, 1 ;6, and 1;10. Each gesture was classified according to type (deictic, conventional, representational) and the relation it held to speech (reinforcing, disambiguating, supplementary). Children and their caregivers produced the same types of gestures and in approximately the same distribution. However, the children differed from their caregivers in the way they used gesture in relation to speech. Over time, children produced many more REINFORCING (bike+point at bike), DISAMBIGUATING (that one+ point at bike), and SUPPLEMENTARY combinations (ride+point at bike). In contrast, the frequency and distribution of caregivers' gesture+ speech combinations remained constant over time. Thus, the changing relation between gesture and speech observed in the children cannot be traced back to the gestural input the children receive. Rather, it appears to reflect changes in the children's own skills, illustrating once again gesture's ability to shed light on developing cognitive and linguistic processes.[*] We thank Jana Iverson for her input on gesture coding, Kristi Schoendube and Jason Voigt for their administrative and technical help, and the project research assistants,

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Gesture offers insight into problem-solving in adults and children

Cited by 33 publications

References 34 publications

In which direction to move? Facilitative and interference effects of gestures on problem solver's thinking

In which direction to move? Facilitative and interference effects of gestures on problem solver's thinking

Gesturing has a larger impact on problem-solving than action, even when action is accompanied by words

Do parents lead their children by the hand?

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