Goldin-Meadow Lab
LANGUAGE IN THE TWO-YEAR OLD: RECEPTIVE AND PRODUCTIVE STAGES
Goldin-Meadow, S., Seligman, M. E. P., & Gelman, R.
1976
Describes 2 stages in the vocabulary development of 12 1-2 yr olds. In the earlier "receptive" stage, Ss said fewer nouns than they understood and said no verbs at all although they understood many. Ss then began to close the comprehension-production gap, entering a "productive" stage in which they said virtually all the nouns they understood plus their first verbs. Frequency and length of word combinations correlated with these vocabulary stages.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE-LIKE COMMUNICATION WITHOUT A LANGUAGE MODEL
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Feldman, H.
1978
Six 17-49 mo old deaf children (of hearing parents) who were unable to acquire oral language naturally and who were not exposed to a standard manual language spontaneously developed a structured sign system that had many of the properties of natural spoken language. This communication system appeared to be largely the invention of the child himself rather than of the caretakers.
DISPLACED COMMUNICATION IN A SELF-STYLED GESTURE SYSTEM: POINTING AT THE NON-PRESENT
Butcher, C., Mylander, C. & Goldin-Meadow, S.
1991
The ability to refer to objects or events that are not in the here and now is widely recognized as an important feature of language, one that sets it apart from other forms of communication. The purpose of this article is to determine whether a deaf child who was not exposed to a usable model of a conventional language could use his self-styled communication system to refer to objects that were out of his perceptual field. We found that, beginning at the age of 3 years and 3 months, the deaf child consistently and reliably used gesture to refer to objects that were not present in the room. Although delayed with respect to the onset of displaced communication in hearing children, the deaf child's use of gesture to refer to nonpresent objects developed despite the fact that his hearing mother rarely used her spontaneous gestures for this purpose. Thus, the techniques necessary to communicate about the "there-and-then" appear to be so fundamental to human language that they can be reinvented by a child who does not have access to a culturally shared linguistic system.
IS GESTURE-SPEECH MISMATCH A GENERAL INDEX OF TRANSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE?
Perry, M., Church, R. B., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
1992
When asked to explain their beliefs about a concept, some children produce gestures that convey different information from the information conveyed in their speech (i.e., gesture-speech mismatches). Moreover, it is precisely the children who produce a large proportion of gesture-speech mismatches in their explanations of a concept who are particularly "ready" to benefit from instruction in that concept, and thus may be considered to be in a transitional state with respect to the concept. Church and Goldin-Meadow (1986) and Perry, Church and Goldin-Meadow (1988) studied this phenomenon with respect to two different concepts at two different ages and found that gesture-speech mismatch reliability predicts readiness to learn in both domains. In an attempt to test further the generality of gesture-speech mismatch as an index of transitional knowledge, Stone, Webb, and Mahootian (1991) explored this phenomenon in a group of 15-year-olds working on a problem-solving task. On this task, however, gesture-speech mismatch was not found to predict transitional knowledge. We present here a theoretical framework, which makes it clear why we expect gesture-speech mismatch to be a general index of transitional knowledge, and then use this framework to motivate our methodological practices for establishing gesture-speech mismatch as a predictor of transitional knowledge. Finally, we present evidence suggesting that, if these practices had been used by Stone et al., they too would have found that gesture-speech mismatch predicts transitional knowledge.
ASSESSING KNOWLEDGE THROUGH GESTURE: USING CHILDREN'S HANDS TO READ THEIR MINDS
Goldin-Meadow, S., Wein, D. & Chang, C.
1992
Is the information that gesture provides about a child's understanding of a task accessible not only to experimenters who are trained in coding gesture but also to untrained observers? Twenty adults were asked to describe the reasoning of 12 different children, each videotaped responding to a Piagetian conservation task. Six of the children on the videotape produced gestures that conveyed the same information as their nonconserving spoken explanations, and 6 produced gestures that conveyed different information from their nonconserving spoken explanations. The adult observers displayed more uncertainty in their appraisals of children who produced different information in gesture and speech than in their appraisals of children who produced the same information in gesture and speech. Moreover, die adults were able to incorporate the information conveyed in the children's gestures into their own spoken appraisals of the children's reasoning. These data suggest that, even without training, adults form impressions of children's knowledge based not only on what children say with their mouths but also on what they say with their hands.
TRANSITIONS IN LEARNING: EVIDENCE FOR SIMULTANEOUSLY ACTIVATED STRATEGIES
Goldin-Meadow, S., Nusbaum, H., Garber, P. & Church, R. B.
1993
Children in transition with respect to a concept, when asked to explain that concept, often convey one strategy in speech and a different one in gesture. Are both strategies activated when that child solves problems instantiating the concept? While solving a math task, discordant children (who produced different strategies in gesture and speech on a pretest) and concordant children (who produced a single strategy) were given a word recall task. All of the children solved the math task incorrectly. However, if discordant children are activating two strategies to arrive at these incorrect solutions, they should expend more effort on this task than concordant children, and consequently have less capacity left over for word-recall and perform less well on it. This prediction was confirmed, suggesting that the transitional state is characterized by dual representations, both of which are activated when attempting to explain or solve a problem.
TRANSITIONS IN CONCEPT ACQUISITION: USING THE HAND TO READ THE MIND
Goldin-Meadow, S., Alibali, M. W., & Church, R. B.
1993
Thoughts conveyed through gesture often differ from thoughts conveyed through speech. In this article, a model of the sources and consequences of such gesture-speech mismatches and their role during transitional periods in the acquisition of concepts is proposed. The model makes 2 major claims: (a) The transitional state is the source of gesture-speech mismatch. In gesture-speech mismatch, 2 beliefs are simultaneously expressed on the same problem-one in gesture and another in speech. This simultaneous activation of multiple beliefs characterizes the transitional knowledge state and creates gesture-speech mismatch. (b) Gesture-speech mismatch signals to the social world that a child is in a transitional state and is ready to learn. The child's spontaneous gestures index the zone of proximal development, thus providing a mechanism by which adults can calibrate their input to that child's level of understanding.
GESTURE-SPEECH MISMATCH AND MECHANISMS OF LEARNING: WHAT THE HANDS REVEAL ABOUT A CHILD'S STATE OF MIND
Alibali, M. W. & Goldin-Meadow, S.
1993
Previous work has shown that, when asked to explain a concept they are acquiring, children often convey one procedure in speech and a different procedure in gesture. Such children, whom we label "discordant," have been shown to be in a transitional state in the sense that they are particularly receptive to instruction--indeed more receptive to instruction than "concordant" children, who convey the same procedure in speech and gesture. This study asks whether the discordant state is transitional, not only in the sense that it predicts receptivity to instruction, but also in the sense that it is both preceded and followed by a concordant state. To address this question, children were asked to solve and explain a series of problems instantiating the concept of mathematical equivalence. The relationship between gesture and speech in each explanation was monitored over the series. We found that the majority of children who learned to correctly solve equivalence problems did so by adhering to the hypothesized path: They first produced a single, incorrect procedure. They then entered a discordant state in which they produced different procedures--one in speech and another in gesture. Finally, they again produced a single procedure, but this time a correct one. These data support the notion that the transitional state is characterized by the concurrent activation of more than one procedure, and provide further evidence that gesture can be a powerful source of insight into the processes involved in cognitive development.
NOUNS AND VERBS IN A SELF-STYLED GESTURE SYSTEM: WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Goldin-Meadow, S., Butcher, C., Mylander, C. & Dodge, M.
1994
A distinction between nouns and verbs is not only universal to all natural languages but it also appears to be central to the structure and function of language. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a deaf child who was not exposed to a usable model of a conventional language would nevertheless incorporate into his self-styled communication system this apparently essential distinction. We found that the child initially maintained a distinction between nouns and verbs by using one set of gestures as nouns and a separate set as verbs. At age 3:3, the child began to use some of his gestures in both grammatical roles; however, he distinguished the two uses by altering the form of the gesture (akin to morphological marking) and its position in a gesture sentence (akin to syntactic marking). Such systematic marking was not found in the spontaneous gestures produced by the child's hearing mother who used gesture as an adjunct to speech rather than as a primary communication system. A distinction between nouns and verbs thus appears to be sufficiently fundamental to human language that it can be reinvented by a child who does not have access to a culturally shared linguistic system.
DO YOU HAVE TO BE RIGHT TO REDESCRIBE?
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Alibali, M. W.
1994
Karmiloff-Smith's developmental perspective forces us to recognize that there are many levels at which knowledge can be represented. We first offer empirical support for a distinction made on theoretical grounds between two such levels. We then argue that ''redescription'' onto a new level need not await success (as Karmiloff-Smith proposes), and that this modification of the theory has important implications for the role redescription plays in development.
THE RESILIENCE OF COMBINATORIAL STRUCTURE AT THE WORD LEVEL: MORPHOLOGY IN SELF-STYLED GESTURE SYSTEMS
Goldin-Meadow, S., Mylander, C., & Butcher, C.
1995
Combinatorial structure at both word and sentence levels is widely recognized as an important feature of language-one that sets it apart from other forms of communication. The purpose of these studies is to determine whether deaf children who were not exposed to an accessible model of a conventional language would nevertheless incorporate word-level combinatorial structure into their self styled communication systems. In previous work, we demonstrated that, despite their lack of conventional linguistic input, deaf children in these circumstances developed spontaneous gesture systems that were structured at the level of the sentence, with regularities identifiable across gestures in a sentence, akin to syntactic structure. The present study was undertaken to determine whether these gesture systems were structured at a second level, the level of the word or gesture - that is, were there regularities within a gesture, akin to morphological structure? Further, if intra-gesture regularities were found, how wide was the range of variability in their expression? Finally, from where did these intra-gesture regularities come? Specifically, were they derived from the gestures the hearing mothers produced in their attempt to interact with their deaf children?
We found that al of the deaf children produced gestures that could be characterized by paradigms of handshape and motion combinations that formed a comprehensive matrix far virtually all of the spontaneous gestures for each child. Moreover, the morphological systems that the children developed, although similar in many respects, were sufficiently different to suggest that the children had introduced relatively arbitrary distinctions into their systems. These differences could not be traced to the spontaneous gestures their hearing mothers produced, but seemed to be shaped by the early gestures that the children themselves created.
These findings suggest that combinatorial structure at more than one level is so fundamental to human language that it can be reinvented by children who do not have access to a culturally shared linguistic system. Apparently, combinatorial structure of this sort is not maintained as a universal property of language solely by historical tradition, but also by its centrality to the structure and function of language.
SILENCE IS LIBERATING: REMOVING THE HANDCUFFS ON GRAMMATICAL EXPRESSION IN THE MANUAL MODALITY
Goldin-Meadow, S., McNeill, D., & Singleton, J.
1996
Grammatical properties are found in conventional sign languages of the deaf and in unconventional gesture systems created by deaf children lacking language models. However, they do not arise in spontaneous gestures produced along with speech. The authors propose a model explaining when the manual modality will assume grammatical properties and when it will not. The model argues that two grammatical features, segmentation and hierarchical combination, appear in all settings in which one human communicates symbolically with another. These properties are preferentially assumed by speech whenever words are spoken, constraining the manual modality to a global form. However, when the manual modality must carry the full burden of communication, it is freed from the global form it assumes when integrated with speech-only to be constrained by the task of symbolic communication to take on the grammatical properties of segmentation and hierarchical combination.
WHAT'S COMMUNICATION GOT TO DO WITH IT: GESTURE IN BLIND CHILDREN
Iverson, J. & Goldin-Meadow, S.
1997
It is widely accepted that gesture can serve a communicative function. The purpose of this study was to explore gesture use in congenitally blind individuals who have never seen gesture and have no experience with its communicative function. Four children blind from birth were tested in 3 discourse situations (narrative, reasoning, and spatial directions) and compared with groups of sighted and blindfolded sighted children. Blind children produced gestures, although not in all of the contexts in which sighted children gestured, and the gestures they produced resembled those of sighted children in both form and content. Results suggest that gesture may serve a function for the speaker that is independent of its impact on the listener.
ASSESSING KNOWLEDGE CONVEYED IN GESTURE: DO TEACHERS HAVE THE UPPER HAND?
Alibali, M., Flevares, L., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
1997
Children's gestures can reveal important information about their problem-solving strategies. This study investigated whether the information children express only in gesture is accessible to adults not trained in gesture coding. Twenty teachers and 20 undergraduates viewed videotaped vignettes of 12 children explaining their solutions to equations. Six children expressed the same strategy in speech and gesture, and 6 expressed different strategies. After each vignette, adults described the child's reasoning. For children who expressed different strategies in speech and gesture, both teachers and undergraduates frequently described strategies that children had not expressed in speech. These additional strategies could often be traced to the children's gestures. Sensitivity to gesture was comparable for teachers and undergraduates. Thus, even without training, adults glean information, not only from children's words but also from their hands.
FROM HERE TO THERE AND NOW TO THEN: THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISPLACED REFERENCE IN HOMESIGN AND ENGLISH
Morford, J. P., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
1997
An essential function of human language is the ability to refer to information that is spatially and temporally displaced from the location of the speaker and the listener, that is, displaced reference. This article describes the development of this function in 4 deaf children who were not exposed to a usable conventional language model and communicated via idiosyncratic gesture systems, called homesign, and in 18 hearing children who were acquiring English as a native language. Although the deaf children referred to the nonpresent much less frequently and at later ages than the hearing children, both groups followed a similar developmental path, adding increasingly abstract categories of displaced reference to their repertoires in the same sequence. Care-givers in both groups infrequently initiated displaced reference, except with respect to communication about past events. Despite the absence of a shared linguistic code, the deaf children succeeded in evoking the non-present by generating novel gestures, by modifying the context of conventional gestures, and by pragmatic means. The findings indicate that a conventional language model is not essential for children to be able to extend their communication beyond the here and now.
SPONTANEOUS SIGN SYSTEMS CREATED BY DEAF CHILDREN IN TWO CULTURES
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Mylander, C.
1998
Deaf children whose access to usable conventional linguistic input, signed or spoken, is severely limited nevertheless use gesture to communicate(1-3). These gestures resemble natural language in that they are structured at the level both of sentence(4) and of word(5). Although the inclination Ito use gesture maybe traceable to the fact that the deaf children's]tearing parents, like all speakers, gesture as they talk(6), the children themselves are responsible for introducing language-like structure into their gestures(7). We have explored the robustness of this phenomenon by observing deaf children of hearing parents in two cultures, an American and a Chinese culture, that differ in their child-rearing practices(8-12) and in the way gesture is used in relation to speech(13). The spontaneous sign systems developed in these cultures shared a number of structural similarities: patterned production and deletion of semantic elements ii the surface structure of a sentence; patterned ordering of those elements within the sentence; and concatenation of propositions within a sentence. These striking similarities offer critical empirical input towards resolving the ongoing debate about the 'innateness' of language in human infants
KNOWLEDGE CONVEYED IN GESTURE IS NOT TIED TO THE HANDS
Garber, P., Alibali, M. W., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
1998
Children frequently gesture when they explain what they know, and their gestures sometimes convey different information than their speech does. in this study, we investigate whether children's gestures convey knowledge that the children themselves can recognize in another context. We asked fourth-grade children to explain their solutions to a set of math problems and identified the solution procedures each child conveyed only in gesture (and not in speech) during the explanations. We then examined whether those procedures could be accessed by the same child on a rating task that did not involve gesture at all. Children rated solutions derived from procedures they conveyed uniquely in gesture higher than solutions derived from procedures they did not convey at all. Thus, gesture is indeed a vehicle through which children express their knowledge. The knowledge children express uniquely in gesture is accessible on other tasks, and in this sense, is not tied to the hands.
GESTURE CONVEYS SUBSTANTIVE INFORMATION ABOUT A CHILD'S THOUGHTS TO ORDINARY LISTENERS
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Sandhofer, C. M.
1999
The gestures that spontaneously occur in communicative contexts have been shown to offer insight into a child's thoughts. The information gesture conveys about what is on a child's mind will, of course, only be accessible to a communication partner if that partner can interpret gesture. Adults were asked to observe a series of children who participated `live' in a set of conservation tasks and gestured spontaneously while performing the tasks. Adults were able to glean substantive information from the children's gestures, information that was not found anywhere in their speech. `Gesture-reading' did, however, have a cost - if gesture conveyed different information from speech, it hindered the listener's ability to identify the message in speech. Thus, ordinary listeners can and do extract information from a child's gestures, even gestures that are unedited and fleeting.
ILLUMINATING MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS THROUGH SPEECH AND GESTURE
Alibali, M. W., Bassok, M., Solomon, K. O., Syc, S. E., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
1999
Examined whether spontaneous hand gestures provide information about how people mentally represent written word problems. 20 college students were asked to describe 6 word problems about constant change, and then to talk aloud as they solved the problems. Two problems depicted continuous change, 2 depicted discrete change, and 2 depicted change that could be construed as either continuous or discrete. Ss' verbal and gestured descriptions of the problems often incorporated information about manner of change. However, the information conveyed in gesture was not always the same as the information conveyed in speech. Ss' problem representations, as expressed in speech and gesture, were systematically related to their problem solutions. When gesture reinforced the representation expressed in the spoken description, Ss were very likely to solve the problem using a strategy compatible with that representation--much more likely than when gesture did not reinforce the spoken description. The results indicated that gesture and speech together provide a better index of mental representation than speech alone.
DOES THE HAND REFLECT IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE? YES AND NO
Goldin-Meadow, S., & Alibali, M. W.
1999
Gesture does not have a fixed position in the Dienes & Perner framework. Its status depends on the way knowledge is expressed. Knowledge reflected in gesture can be fully implicit (neither factuality nor predication is explicit) if the goal is simply to move a pointing hand to a target. Knowledge reflected in gesture can be explicit (both factuality and predication are explicit) if the goal is to indicate an object. However, gesture is not restricted to these two extreme positions. When gestures are unconscious accompaniments to speech and represent information that is distinct from speech, the knowledge they convey is factuality-implicit but predication-explicit.
THE ROLE OF GESTURE IN COMMUNICATION AND THINKING
Goldin-Meadow, S.
1999
People move their hands as they talk--they gesture. Gesturing is a robust phenomenon, found across cultures, ages, and tasks. Gesture is even found in individuals blind from birth. But what purpose, if any, does gesture serve? In this review, I begin by examining gesture when it stands on its own, substituting for speech and clearly serving a communicative function. When called upon to carry the full burden of communication, gesture assumes a language-like form, with structure at word and sentence levels. However, when produced along with speech, gesture assumes a different form--it becomes imagistic and analog. Despite its form, the gesture that accompanies speech also communicates. Trained coders can glean substantive information from gesture--information that is not always identical to that gleaned from speech. Gesture can thus serve as a research tool, shedding light on speakers' unspoken thoughts. The controversial question is whether gesture conveys information to listeners not trained to read them. Do spontaneous gestures communicate to ordinary listeners? Or might they be produced only for speakers themselves? I suggest these are not mutually exclusive functions--gesture serves as both a tool for communication for listeners, and a tool for thinking for speakers.
WHAT THE TEACHER'S HANDS TELL THE STUDENTS MIND ABOUT MATH
Goldin-Meadow, S., Kim, S., & Singer, M.
1999
Does nonverbal behavior contribute to cognitive as well as affective components of teaching? We examine here one type of nonverbal behavior: spontaneous gestures that accompany talk. Eight teachers were asked to instruct 49 children individually on mathematical equivalence as it applies to addition. All teachers used gesture to convey problem-solving strategies. The gestured strategies either reinforced (matched) or differed from (mismatched) strategies conveyed in speech. Children were more likely to reiterate teacher speech if it was accompanied by matching gesture than by no gesture at all and less likely to reiterate teacher speech if it was accompanied by mismatching gesture than by no gesture at all. Moreover, children were able to glean problem-solving strategies from the teachers' gestures and recast them into their own speech. Not only do teachers produce gestures that express task-relevant information, but their students take notice.
BEYOND WORDS: THE IMPORTANCE OF GESTURE TO RESEARCHERS AND LEARNERS
Goldin-Meadow, S.
2000
Gesture has privileged access to information that children know but do not say. As such, it can serve as an additional window to the mind of the developing child, one that researchers are only beginning to acknowledge. Gesture might, however, do more than merely reflect understanding--it may be involved in the process of cognitive change itself. This question will guide research on gesture as we enter the new millennium. Gesture might contribute to change through 2 mechanisms which are not mutually exclusive: (1) indirectly, by communicating unspoken aspects of the learner's cognitive state to potential agents of change (parents, teachers, sibling, friends); and (2) directly, by offering the learner a simpler way to express and explore ideas that may be difficult to think through in a verbal format, thus easing the learner's cognitive burden. As a result, the next decade may well offer evidence of gesture's dual potential as an illuminating tool for researchers and as a facilitator of cognitive growth for learners themselves.
THE CULTURAL BOUNDS OF MATERNAL ACCOMMODATION
Goldin-Meadow, S., & Saltzman, J.
2000
Children with special needs typically require family accommodation to those needs, We explore here the extent to which cultural forces shape the accommodations mothers make when communicating with young deaf children. Sixteen mother-child dyads (8 Chinese, 8 American) were videotaped at home. In each culture, 4 mothers interacted with their deaf children, and 4 interacted with their hearing children. None of the deaf children knew sign language, nor spoke at age level. We found that mothers adjusted their communicative behaviors to their deaf children, but in every case, those adjustments,were calibrated to cultural norms. American mothers, for example, increased their use of gesture with deaf children but stopped far short of the Chinese range-despite rite obvious potential benefits of gesturing to children who cannot hear: These findings provide the first cross-cultural demonstration that children are, first and foremost, inculcated into their cultures and, only within that framework, then treated as special cases.
THE RELATION BETWEEN GESTURE AND SPEECH IN CONGENITALLY BLIND AND SIGHTED LANGUAGE-LEARNERS
Iverson, J. M., Tencer, H. L., Lany, J., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2000
The aim of this study was to explore the role of vision in early gesturing. The authors examined gesture development in 5 congenitally blind and 5 sighted toddlers videotaped longitudinally between the ages of 14 and 28 months in their homes while engaging in free play with a parent or experimenter. All of the blind children were found to produce at least some gestures during the one-word stage of language development. However, gesture production was relatively low among the blind children relative to their sighted peers. Moreover, although blind and sighted children produced the same overall set of gesture types, the distribution of gesture types across categories differed. In addition, blind children used gestures primarily to communicate about objects that were nearby, while sighted children used them for nearby as well as distally located objects. These findings suggest that gesture may play different roles in the language-learning process for sighted and blind children. Nevertheless, it is clear that gesture is a robust phenomenon of early communicative development, emerging even in the absence of experience with a visual model.
HOW DO PROFOUNDLY DEAF CHILDREN LEARN TO READ?
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Mayberry, R.
2001
Reading requires two related, but separable, capabilities: (1) familiarity with a language, and (2) understanding the mapping between that language and the printed word (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000; Hoover & Gough, 1990). Children who are profoundly deaf are disadvantaged on both counts. Not surprisingly, then, reading is difficult for profoundly deaf children. But some deaf children do manage to read fluently. How? Are they simply the smartest of the crop, or do they have some strategy, or circumstance, that facilitates linking the written code with language? A priori one might guess that knowing American Sign Language (ASL) would interfere with learning to read English simply because ASL does not map in any systematic way onto English. However, recent research has suggested that individuals with good signing skills are not worse, and may even be better, readers than individuals with poor signing skills (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000). Thus, knowing a language (even if it is not the language captured in print) appears to facilitate learning to read. Nonetheless, skill in signing does not guarantee skill in reading—reading must be taught. The next frontier for reading research in deaf education is to understand how deaf readers map their knowledge of sign language onto print, and how instruction can best be used to turn signers into readers.
EXPLAINING MATH: GESTURE LIGHTENS THE LOAD
Goldin-Meadow, S., Nusbaum, H., Kelly, S., & Wagner, S.
2001
Why is it that people cannot keep their hands still when they talk? One reason may be that gesturing actually lightens cognitive load while a person is thinking of what to say. We asked adults and children to remember a list of letters or words while explaining how they solved a math problem. Both groups remembered significantly more items when they gestured during their math explanations them when they did not gesture. Gesturing appeared to save the speakers' cognitive resources on the explanation task, permitting the speakers to allocate more resources to the memory task. It is widely accepted that gesturing reflects a speaker's cognitive state, but our observations suggest that, by reducing cognitive load, gesturing may also play a role in shaping that state.
THE RESILIENCE OF GESTURE IN TALK: GESTURE IN BLIND SPEAKERS AND LISTENERS
Iverson, J. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2001
Spontaneous gesture frequently accompanies speech. The question is why. In these studies, ive tested two non-mutually exclusive possibilities. First, speakers may gesture simply because they see others gesture and learn front this model to move their hands as they talk. We tested this hypothesis by examining spontaneous communication in congenitally blind children and adolescents. Second, speakers may gesture because they recognize that gestures can be useful to the listener. We tested this hypothesis by examining whether speakers gesture even when communicating with a blind listener who is unable to profit from the information that the hands convey. We found that congenitally blind speakers, who had never seen gestures, nevertheless gestured as they spoke, conveying the same information and producing the same range of gesture forms as sighted speakers. Moreover, blind speakers gestured even when interacting with another blind individual who could not have benefited from the information contained in those gestures. These findings underscore the robustness of gesture in talk and suggest that the gestures that co-occur with speech may serve a function for the speaker as well as for the listener.
ENACTING STORIES, SEEING WORLDS: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN THE CROSS-CULTURAL NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF LINGUISTICALLY ISOLATED DEAF CHILDREN
Phillips, S. B. V. D., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Miller, P. J.
2001
The stories that children hear not only offer them a model for how to tell stories, but they also serve as a window into their cultural worlds. What would happen if a child were unable to hear what surrounds them? Would such children have any sense that events can be narrated and, if so, would they narrate those events in a culturally appropriate manner? To explore this question, we examined children who did not have access to conventional language - deaf children whose profound hearing deficits prevented them from acquiring the language spoken around them, and whose hearing parents had not yet exposed them to a conventional sign language. We observed 8 deaf children of hearing parents in two cultures, 4 European-American children from either Chicago or Philadelphia, and 4 Taiwanese children from Taipei, all of whom invented gesture systems to communicate. All 8 children used their gestures to recount stories, and those gestured stories were of the same types, and of the same structure, as those told by hearing children. Moreover, the deaf children seemed to produce culturally specific narrations despite their lack of a verbal language model, suggesting that these particular messages are so central to the culture as to be instantiated in nonverbal as well as verbal practices.
A HELPING HAND IN ASSESSING CHILDREN'S KNOWLEDGE: INSTRUCTING ADULTS TO ATTEND TO GESTURE
Kelly, S. D., Singer, M. A., Hicks, J. & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2002
The spontaneous hand gestures that accompany children's explanations of concepts have been used by trained experimenters to gain insight into children's knowledge. In this article, 3 experiments tested whether it is possible to teach adults who are not trained investigators to comprehend information conveyed through children's hand gestures. In Experiment 1, we used a questionnaire to explore whether adults benefit from gesture instruction when making assessments of young children's knowledge of conservation problems. In Experiment 2, we used a similar questionnaire, but asked adults to make assessments of older children's mathematical knowledge. Experiment 3 also concentrated on math assessments, but used a free-recall paradigm to test the extent of the adult's understanding of the child's knowledge. Taken together, the results of the experiments suggest that instructing adults to attend to gesture enhances their assessment of children's knowledge at multiple ages and across multiple domains.
CONSTRUCTING COMMUNICATION BY HAND
Goldin-Meadow, S.
2002
I focus here on how children construct communication, looking in particular at places where the language model of the community exerts less influence on the child. I first describe the gesture systems constructed by deaf children who are unable to acquire speech and have not been exposed to a sign language. These children are constructing their communication systems in large part without benefit of conventional linguistic input. As a result, the children's gestures reflect kills that they themselves bring to the language-learning situation, skills that interact with linguistic input when that input is available. I then describe the gestures that hearing children produce when they talk. Gesture does not need to assume a language-like role for these children and indeed it does not. Nevertheless, the gestures these speaking children produce convey information and that information is often different from the information found in their talk. Gesture thus allows the children to reach beyond the confines of the language they are speaking. Both cases highlight the child's contribution to the communication process and provide unique opportunities to observe the child's skills as language-maker.
IS THERE A NATURAL ORDER FOR EXPRESSING SEMANTIC RELATIONS?
Gershkoff-Stowe, L., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2002
Discusses the three articles in this volume which emphasize that the initial and end points of a U are never really identical. According to the author, the question is--how identical need they be for us to call the developmental trajectory U-shaped? The virtue in thinking about a developmental path in U-shaped terms is that we focus our attention on possible reorganizations and mechanisms of change. Recurrence, regression, and U's are to a large extent a product of the level at which we choose to describe developmental change. They are, in this sense, in the eye of the beholder and may be more common than we think.
THOUGHT BEFORE LANGUAGE: HOW DEAF AND HEARING CHILDREN EXPRESS MOTION EVENTS ACROSS CULTURES
Zheng, M., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2002
Do children come to the language-learning situation with a predetermined set of ideas about motion events that they want to communicate? If so, is the expression of these ideas modified by exposure to a language model within a particular cultural context? We explored these questions by comparing the gestures produced by Chinese and American deaf children who had not been exposed to a usable conventional language model with the speech of hearing children learning Mandarin or English. We found that, even in the absence of any conventional language model, deaf children conveyed the central elements of a motion event in their communications. More surprisingly, deaf children growing up in an American culture used their gestures to express motion events in precisely the same ways as deaf children growing up in a Chinese culture. In contrast, hearing children in the two cultures expressed motion events differently, in accordance with the languages they were learning. The American children obeyed the patterns of English and rarely omitted words for figures or agents. The Chinese children had more flexibility as Mandarin permits (but does not demand) deletion. Interestingly, the Chinese hearing children's descriptions of motion events resembled the deaf children's descriptions more closely than did the American hearing children's. The thoughts that deaf children convey in their gestures thus may serve as the starting point and perhaps a default for all children as they begin the process of grammaticization - thoughts that have not yet been filtered through a language model.
GESTURE OFFERS INSIGHT INTO PROBLEM-SOLVING IN ADULTS AND CHILDREN
Garber, P., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2002
When asked to explain their solutions to a problem, both adults and children gesture as they talk: These gestures at times convey information that is not conveyed in speech and thus reveal thoughts that are distinct from those revealed in speech. In this study, the authors use the classic Tower of Hanoi puzzle to validate the claim that gesture and speech taken together can reflect the activation of two cognitive strategies within a single response. The Tower of Hanoi is a well-studied puzzle, known to be most efficiently solved by activating subroutines at theoretically defined choice points. When asked to explain how they solved the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, both adults and children produced significantly more gesture-speech mismatches-explanations in which speech conveyed one path and gesture another at these theoretically defined choice points than they produced at non-choice points. Even when the participants did not solve the problem efficiently, gesture could be used to indicate where the participants were deciding between alternative paths. Gesture can, thus, serve as a useful adjunct to speech when attempting to discover cognitive processes in problem-solving.
FROM CHILDREN'S HANDS TO ADULTS' EARS: GESTURE'S ROLE IN TEACHING AND LEARNING
Goldin-Meadow, S., & Singer, M. A.
2003
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.
U-SHAPED CHANGES ARE IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
Goldin-Meadow, S.
2004
Discusses the three articles in this volume which emphasize that the initial and end points of a U are never really identical. According to the author, the question is--how identical need they be for us to call the developmental trajectory U-shaped? The virtue in thinking about a developmental path in U-shaped terms is that we focus our attention on possible reorganizations and mechanisms of change. Recurrence, regression, and U's are to a large extent a product of the level at which we choose to describe developmental change. They are, in this sense, in the eye of the beholder and may be more common than we think.
PROBING THE MENTAL REPRESENTATION OF GESTURE.
Wagner, S., Nusbaum, H., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2004
What type of mental representation underlies the gestures that accompany speech? We used a dual-task paradigm to compare the demands gesturing makes on visuospatial and verbal working memories. Participants in one group remembered a string of letters (verbal working memory group) and those in a second group remembered a visual grid pattern (visuospatial working memory group) while explaining math problems. If gesture production is mediated by visuospatial representation, gesturing should interfere more with performance on the concurrent visuospatial task than the concurrent verbal task. We found, however, that participants in both groups remembered significantly more items when they gestured than when they did not gesture. Moreover, the number of items remembered depended on the meaning conveyed by gesture. When gesture conveyed the same prepositional information as speech, participants remembered more items than when it conveyed different information. Thus, in contrast to simple handwaving, the demands that gesture makes on working memory appear to be propositional rather than visuospatial.
GESTURE'S ROLE IN THE LEARNING PROCESS
Goldin-Meadow, S.
2004
When children explain their answers to a problem, they convey their thoughts not only in speech but also in the gestures that accompany that speech. Teachers, when explaining problems to a child, also convey information in both speech and gesture. Thus, there is an undercurrent of conversation that takes place in gesture alongside the acknowledged conversation in speech. This article shows that these gestures can play a crucial, although typically unacknowledged, role in teaching and learning.
CHILDREN LEARN WHEN THEIR TEACHERS' GESTURES AND SPEECH DIFFER.
Singer, M. A., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2005
Teachers gesture when they teach, and those gestures do not always convey the same information as their speech. Gesture thus offers learners a second message. To determine whether learners take advantage of this offer, we gave 160 children in the third and fourth grades instruction in mathematical equivalence. Children were taught either one or two problem-solving strategies in speech accompanied by no gesture, gesture conveying the same strategy, or gesture conveying a different strategy. The children were likely to profit from instruction with gesture, but only when it conveyed a different strategy than speech did. Moreover, two strategies were effective in promoting learning only when the second strategy was taught in gesture, not speech. Gesture thus has an active hand in learning.
HOW OUR HANDS HELP US LEARN.
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Wagner, S. M.
2005
When people talk they gesture, and those gestures often reflect thoughts not expressed in their words. In this sense, gesture and the speech it accompanies can mismatch. Gesture-speech 'mismatches' are found when learners are on the verge of making progress on a task - when they are ready to learn. Moreover, mismatches provide insight into the mental processes that characterize learners when in this transitional state. Gesture is not just handwaving - it reflects how we think. However, evidence is mounting that gesture goes beyond reflecting our thoughts and can have a hand in changing those thoughts. We consider two ways in which gesture could change the course of learning: indirectly by influencing learning environments or directly by influencing learners themselves.
GESTURE PAVES THE WAY FOR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Iverson, J.M., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2005
In development, children often use gesture to communicate before they use words. The question is whether these gestures merely precede language development or are fundamentally tied to it. We examined 10 children making the transition from single words to two-word combinations and found that gesture had a tight relation to the children's lexical and syntactic development. First, a great many of the lexical items that each child produced initially in gesture later moved to that child's verbal lexicon. Second, children who were first to produce gesture-plus-word combinations conveying two elements in a proposition (point at bird and say "nap") were also first to produce two-word combinations ("bird nap"). Changes in gesture thus not only predate but also predict changes in language, suggesting that early gesture may be paving the way for future developments in language.
GESTURE IS AT THE CUTTING EDGE OF EARLY LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Ozcaliskan, S. & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2005
Children who produce one word at a time often use gesture to supplement their speech, turning a single word into an utterance that conveys a sentence-like meaning ('eat'+ point at cookie). Interestingly, the age at which children first produce supplementary gesture-speech combinations of this sort reliably predicts the age at which they first produce two-word utterances. Gesture thus serves as a signal that a child will soon be ready to begin producing multi-word sentences. The question is what happens next. Gesture could continue to expand a child's communicative repertoire over development, combining with words to convey increasingly complex ideas. Alternatively, after serving as an opening wedge into language, gesture could cease its role as a forerunner of linguistic change. We addressed this question in a sample of 40 typically developing children, each observed at 14, 18, and 22 months. The number of supplementary gesture-speech combinations the children produced increased significantly from 14 to 22 months. More importantly, the types of supplementary combinations the children produced changed over time and presaged changes in their speech. Children produced three distinct constructions across the two modalities several months before these same constructions appeared entirely within speech. Gesture thus continues to be at the cutting edge of early language development, providing stepping-stones to increasingly complex linguistic constructions.
EXPRESSING GENERIC CONCEPTS WITH AND WITHOUT A LANGUAGE MODEL
Goldin-Meadow, S., Gelman, S., & Mylander, C.
2005
Utterances expressing generic kinds ("birds fly") highlight qualities of a category that are stable and enduring, and thus provide insight into conceptual organization. To explore the role that linguistic input plays in children's production of generic nouns, we observed American and Chinese deaf children whose hearing losses prevented them from learning speech and whose hearing parents had not exposed them to sign. These children develop gesture systems that have language-like structure at many different levels. The specific question we addressed in this study was whether the gesture systems, developed without input from a conventional language model, would contain genetics. We found that the deaf children used generics in the gestures they invented, and did so at about the same rate as hearing children growing up in the same cultures and learning English or Mandarin. Moreover, the deaf children produced more generics for animals than for artifacts, a bias found previously in adult English- and Mandarin-speakers and also found in both groups of hearing children in our current study. This bias has been hypothesized to reflect the different conceptual organizations underlying animal and artifact categories. Our results suggest that not only is a language model not necessary for young children to produce generic utterances, but the bias to produce more generics for animals than artifacts also does not require linguistic input to develop.
Gesture is typically produced with speech, forming a fully integrated system with that speech. However, under unusual circumstances, gesture can be produced completely on its own--without speech. In these instances, gesture takes over the full burden of communication usually shared by the two modalities. What happens to gesture in these two very different contexts? One possibility is that there are no differences in the forms gesture takes in these two contexts--that gesture is gesture no matter what its function. But, in fact, that's not what we find. When gesture is produced on its own, it assumes the full burden of communication and takes on a language-like form, with sentence-level ordering rules, word-level paradigms, and grammatical categories. In contrast, when gesture is produced in conjunction with speech, it shares the burden of communication with speech and takes on a global imagistic form, often conveying information not found anywhere in speech. Gesture thus changes its form according to its function.
THE SEEDS OF SPATIAL GRAMMAR IN THE MANUAL MODALITY
So, C., Coppola, M., Licciardello, V., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2005
Sign languages modulate the production of signs in space and use this spatial modulation to refer back to entities--to maintain coreference. We ask here whether spatial modulation is so fundamental to language in the manual modality that it will be invented by individuals asked to create gestures on the spot. English speakers were asked to describe vignettes under 2 conditions: using gesture without speech, and using speech with spontaneous gestures. When using gesture alone, adults placed gestures for particular entities in non-neutral locations and then used those locations to refer back to the entities. When using gesture plus speech, adults also produced gestures in non-neutral locations but used the locations coreferentially far less often. When gesture is forced to take on the full burden of communication, it exploits space for coreference. Coreference thus appears to be a resilient property of language, likely to emerge in communication systems no matter how simple.
WHAT LANGUAGE CREATION IN THE MANUAL MODALITY TELLS US ABOUT THE FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE
Goldin-Meadow, S.
2005
Universal Grammar offers a set of hypotheses about the biases children bring to language-learning. But testing these hypotheses is difficult, particularly if we look only at language-learning under typical circumstances. Children are influenced by the linguistic input to which they are exposed at the earliest stages of language-learning. Their biases will therefore be obscured by the input they receive. A clearer view of the child's preparation for language comes from observing children who are not exposed to linguistic input. Deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from learning the spoken language that surrounds them, and whose hearing parents have not yet exposed them to sign language, nevertheless communicate with the hearing individuals in their worlds and use gestures, called homesigns, to do so. This article explores which properties of Universal Grammar can be found in the deaf children's homesign systems, and thus tests linguistic theory against acquisition data.
DO MOTHERS LEAD THEIR CHILDREN BY THE HAND?
Ozcaliskan, S. & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2005
The 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.
TALKING AND THINKING WITH OUR HANDS
Goldin-Meadow, S.
2006
When people talk, they gesture. Typically, gesture is produced along with speech and forms a fully integrated system with that speech. However, under unusual circumstances, gesture can be produced on its own, without speech. In these instances, gesture must take over the full burden of communication usually shared by the two modalities. What happens to gesture in this very different context? One possibility is that there are no differences in the forms gesture takes with speech and without it--that gesture is gesture no matter what its function. But that is not what we find. When gesture is produced on its own and assumes the full burden of communication, it takes on a language-like form. In contrast, when gesture is produced in conjunction with speech and shares the burden of communication with that speech, it takes on an unsegmented, imagistic form, often conveying information not found in speech. As such, gesture sheds light on how people think and can even play a role in changing those thoughts. Gesture can thus be part of language or it can itself be language, altering its form to fit its function.
THE ROLE OF GESTURE IN LEARNING: DO CHILDREN USE THEIR HANDS TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS?
Cook, S.,M., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2006
Adding gesture to spoken instructions makes those instructions more effective. The question we ask here is why. A group of 49 third and fourth grade children were given instruction in mathematical equivalence with gesture or without it. Children given instruction that included a correct problem-solving strategy in gesture were significantly more likely to produce that strategy in their own gestures during the same instruction period than children not exposed to the strategy in gesture. Those children were then significantly more likely to succeed on a posttest than children who did not produce the strategy in gesture. Gesture during instruction encourages children to produce gestures of their own, which, in turn, leads to learning. Children may be able to use their hands to change their minds.
THE IMPORTANCE OF GESTURE IN CHILDREN'S SPATIAL REASONING
Ehrlich, S. B., Levine, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2006
On average, men outperform women on mental rotation tasks. Even boys as young as 4 1/2 perform better than girls on simplified spatial transformation tasks. The goal of our study was to explore ways of improving 5-year-olds' performance on a spatial transformation task and to examine the strategies children use to solve this task. We found that boys performed better than girls before training and that both boys and girls improved with training, whether they were given explicit instruction or just practice. Regardless of training condition, the more children gestured about moving the pieces when asked to explain how they solved the spatial transformation task, the better they performed on the task, with boys gesturing about movement significantly more (and performing better) than girls. Gesture thus provides useful information about children's spatial strategies, raising the possibility that gesture training may be particularly effective in improving children's mental rotation skills.
MAKING CHILDREN GESTURE BRINGS OUT IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE AND LEADS TO LEARNING
Broaders, S.C., Wagner Cook, S. & Mitchell, Z.
2007
Speakers routinely gesture with their hands when they talk, and those gestures often convey information not found anywhere in their speech. This information is typically not consciously accessible, yet it provides an early sign that the speaker is ready to learn a particular task (S. Goldin-Meadow, 2003). In this sense, the unwitting gestures that speakers produce reveal their implicit knowledge. But what if a learner was forced to gesture? Would those elicited gestures also reveal implicit knowledge and, in so doing, enhance learning? To address these questions, the authors told children to gesture while explaining their solutions to novel math problems and examined the effect of this manipulation on the expression of implicit knowledge in gesture and learning. The authors found that, when told to gesture, children who were unable to solve the math problems often added new and correct problem-solving strategies, expressed only in gesture, to their repertoires. The authors also found that when these children were given instructions on the math problems later, they were more likely to succeed on the problems than children told not to gesture. Telling children to gesture thus encourages them to convey previously unexpressed, implicit ideas, which, in turn, makes them receptive to instruction that leads to learning.
HOW CHILDREN MAKE LANGUAGE OUT OF GESTURE: MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE IN GESTURE SYSTEMS DEVELOPED BY AMERICAN AND CHINESE DEAF CHILDREN
Goldin-Meadow, S., Mylander, C. & Franklin, A.
2007
When children learn languages, they apply their language-learning skills to the linguistic input they receive. But what happens if children are not exposed to input from a conventional language? Do they engage their language-learning skills nonetheless, applying them to whatever unconventional input they have? We address this question by examining gesture systems created by four American and four Chinese deaf children. The children's profound hearing losses prevented them from learning spoken language, and their hearing parents had not exposed them to sign language, Nevertheless, the children in both cultures invented gesture systems that were structured at the morphological/word level. Interestingly, the differences between the children's systems were no bigger across cultures than within cultures. The children's morphemes could not be traced to their hearing mothers' gestures; however, they were built out of forms and meanings shared with their mothers. The findings suggest that children construct morphological structure out of the input that is handed to them, even if that input is not linguistic in form.
YOUNG CHILDREN USE THEIR HANDS TO TELL THEIR MOTHERS WHAT TO SAY
Goldin-Meadow, S. Goodrich, W., Sauer, E. & Iverson, J.
2007
Children produce their first gestures before their first words, and their first gesture+word sentences before their first word+word sentences. These gestural accomplishments have been found not only to predate linguistic milestones, but also to predict them. Findings of this sort suggest that gesture itself might be playing a role in the language-learning process. But what role does it play? Children's gestures could elicit from their mothers the kinds of words and sentences that the children need to hear in order to take their next linguistic step. We examined maternal responses to the gestures and speech that 10 children produced during the one-word period. We found that all 10 mothers 'translated' their children's gestures into words, providing timely models for how one- and two-word ideas can be expressed in English. Gesture thus offers a mechanism by which children can point out their thoughts to mothers, who then calibrate their speech to those thoughts, and potentially facilitate language-learning.
POINTING SETS THE STAGE FOR LEARNING LANGUAGE- AND CREATING LANGUAGE
Goldin-Meadow, S.
2007
Tomasello, Carpenter, and Liszkowski (2007) have argued that pointing gestures do much more than single out objects in the world. Pointing gestures function as part of a system of shared intentionality even at early stages of development. As such, pointing gestures from the platform on which linguistic communication rests, paving the way for later language learning. This commentary provides evidence that pointing gestures do establish a foundation for learning a language and, moreover, set the stage for creating a language.
SPEECH-ASSOCIATED GESTURES, BROCA'S AREA, AND THE HUMAN MIRROR SYSTEM
Skipper, J. I., Goldin-Meadow, S., Nusbaum, H. & Small, S.
2007
Speech-associated gestures are hand and arm movements that not only convey semantic information to listeners but are themselves actions. Broca's area has been assumed to play an important role both in semantic retrieval or selection (as part of a language comprehension system) and in action recognition (as part of a "mirror" or "observation-execution matching" system). We asked whether the role that Broca's area plays in processing speech-associated gestures is consistent with the semantic retrieval/selection account (predicting relatively weak interactions between Broca's area and other cortical areas because the meaningful information that speech-associated gestures convey reduces semantic ambiguity and thus reduces the need for semantic retrieval/selection) or the action recognition account (predicting strong interactions between Broca's area and other cortical areas because speech-associated gestures are goal-direct actions that are "mirrored"). We compared the functional connectivity of Broca's area with other cortical areas when participants listened to stories while watching meaningful speech-associated gestures, speech-irrelevant self-grooming hand movements, or no hand movements. A network analysis of neuroimaging data showed that interactions involving Broca's area and other cortical areas were weakest when spoken language was accompanied by meaningful speech-associated gestures, and strongest when spoken language was accompanied by self-grooming hand movements or by no hand movements at all. Results are discussed with respect to the role that the human mirror system plays in processing speech-associated movements.
ON INVENTING LANGUAGE
Goldin-Meadow, S.
2007
[...] despite the schools' best efforts, many profoundly deaf children were unable to acquire spoken language (this was many years before cochlear implants came on the scene). The children combined gestures, which were themselves composed of parts (akin to morphemes in conventional sign languages), into sentencelike strings that were structured with grammatical rules for deletion and order. Segmentation and combination are at the heart of human language, and they formed the foundation of the deaf children's gesture systems.\n This small and self-contained community consequently offers a singular perspective on some classic questions in historical linguistics.
THE CHALLENGE: SOME PROPERTIES OF LANGUAGE CAN BE LEARNED WITHOUT LINGUISTIC INPUT
Goldin-Meadow, S.
2007
Usage-based accounts of language-learning ought to predict that, in the absence of linguistic input, children will not communicate in language-like ways. But this prediction is not borne out by the data. Deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from acquiring the spoken language that surrounds them, and whose hearing parents have not exposed them to a conventional sign language, invent gesture systems, called homesigns, that display many of the properties found in natural language. Children thus have biases to structure their communication in language-like ways, biases that reflect their cognitive skills. But why do the deaf children recruit this particular set of cognitive skills, and not others, to their homesign systems? In other words, what determines the biases children bring to language-learning? The answer is clearly not linguistic input.
GESTURING MAKES LEARNING LAST
Cook, S. W., Mitchell, Z. & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2008
The gestures children spontaneously produce when explaining a task predict whether they will subsequently learn that task. Why? Gesture might simply reflect a child's readiness to learn a particular task. Alternatively, gesture might itself play a role in learning the task. To investigate these alternatives, we experimentally manipulated children's gesture during instruction in a new mathematical concept. We found that requiring children to gesture while learning the new concept helped them retain the knowledge they had gained during instruction. In contrast, requiring children to speak, but not gesture, while learning the concept had no effect on solidifying learning. Gesturing can thus play a causal role in learning, perhaps by giving learners an alternative, embodied way of representing new ideas. We may be able to improve children's learning just by encouraging them to move their hands.
LEARNING WORDS BY HAND: GESTURES ROLE IN PREDICITING VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT
Rowe, M. L., Ozcaliskan, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2008
Children vary widely in how quickly their vocabularies grow. Can looking at early gesture use in children and parents help us predict this variability? We videotaped 53 English-speaking parent-child dyads in their homes during their daily activities for 90-minutes every four months between child age 14 and 34 months. At 42 months, children were given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). We found that child gesture use at 14 months was a significant predictor of vocabulary size at 42 months, above and beyond the effects of parent and child word use at 14 months. Parent gesture use at 14 months was not directly related to vocabulary development, but did relate to child gesture use at 14 months which, in turn, predicted child vocabulary. These relations hold even when background factors such as socio-economic status are controlled. The findings underscore the importance of examining early gesture when predicting child vocabulary development.
LEARNING TO TALK IN A GESTURE-RICH WORLD: EARLY COMMUNICATION IN ITALIAN VS. AMERICAN CHILDREN
Iverson, J. M., Capirci, O., Volterra, V., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
2008
Italian children are immersed in a gesture-rich culture. Given the large gesture repertoire of Italian adults, young Italian children might be expected to develop a larger inventory of gestures than American children. If so, do these gestures impact the course of language learning? We examined gesture and speech production in Italian and US children between the onset of first words and the onset of two-word combinations. We found differences in the size of the gesture repertoires produced by the Italian vs. the American children, differences that were inversely related to the size of the children's spoken vocabularies. Despite these differences in gesture vocabulary, in both cultures we found that gesture + speech combinations reliably predicted the onset of two-word combinations, underscoring the robustness of gesture as a harbinger of linguistic development.
Learning to talk in a gesture-rich world: Early communication in Italian vs. American children