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Hearing Gesture: How Our Hands Help Us Think
Many nonverbal behaviors―smiling, blushing, shrugging―reveal our emotions. One nonverbal behavior, gesturing, exposes our thoughts. This book explores how we move our hands when we talk, and what it means when we do so.
Susan Goldin-Meadow begins with an intriguing when explaining their answer to a task, children sometimes communicate different ideas with their hand gestures than with their spoken words. Moreover, children whose gestures do not match their speech are particularly likely to benefit from instruction in that task. Not only do gestures provide insight into the unspoken thoughts of children (one of Goldin-Meadow’s central claims), but gestures reveal a child’s readiness to learn, and even suggest which teaching strategies might be most beneficial.
In addition, Goldin-Meadow characterizes gesture when it fulfills the entire function of language (as in the case of Sign Languages of the Deaf), when it is reshaped to suit different cultures (American and Chinese), and even when it occurs in children who are blind from birth.
Focusing on what we can discover about speakers―adults and children alike―by watching their hands, this book discloses the active role that gesture plays in conversation and, more fundamentally, in thinking. In general, we are unaware of gesture, which occurs as an undercurrent alongside an acknowledged verbal exchange. In this book, Susan Goldin-Meadow makes clear why we must not ignore the background conversation.
Susan Goldin-Meadow begins with an intriguing when explaining their answer to a task, children sometimes communicate different ideas with their hand gestures than with their spoken words. Moreover, children whose gestures do not match their speech are particularly likely to benefit from instruction in that task. Not only do gestures provide insight into the unspoken thoughts of children (one of Goldin-Meadow’s central claims), but gestures reveal a child’s readiness to learn, and even suggest which teaching strategies might be most beneficial.
In addition, Goldin-Meadow characterizes gesture when it fulfills the entire function of language (as in the case of Sign Languages of the Deaf), when it is reshaped to suit different cultures (American and Chinese), and even when it occurs in children who are blind from birth.
Focusing on what we can discover about speakers―adults and children alike―by watching their hands, this book discloses the active role that gesture plays in conversation and, more fundamentally, in thinking. In general, we are unaware of gesture, which occurs as an undercurrent alongside an acknowledged verbal exchange. In this book, Susan Goldin-Meadow makes clear why we must not ignore the background conversation.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 14, 2020
nou ze heeft mij wel overtuigd van het cognitieve belang van gestures, wel knap ook in een BOEKformat waar je alles in woorden moet uitleggen (e.g. "hand moving upward in spiraling manner")! ik kan vanaf nu nooit meer 'gesture-speech mismatch' lezen. ook interessant: ze gooit het punt op of je moet overwegen te tamperen met een goed werkend systeem (namelijk co-speech gesture) in educatieve contexten.
March 11, 2014
Ochen Powell mentioned this book in our of our sessions with her. It is interesting and has made me much more aware of the implications of hand gestures. I found quite a limited range of observations in the text, but back up with enormously broad research.
It boiled down to - hand gestures often indicate knowledge [or ways modelling I wonder?] which at times runs ahead of a person's ability to verbalise ideas. It can be seen to shape thought, particularly in visual - spatial reasoning, and probably lightens cognitive load by externalising thought. It can run ahead of conscious thought - which is the interesting bit. The research was conducted to include people who had never been sighted, and yet made the same speech accompanying gestures as those who used communication knowing a speaker was watching their hands.
So far today, I have already noticed one conversation that took place and had a completely different subtext and discourse if you watched the hands - so I guess it was worth reading...
It boiled down to - hand gestures often indicate knowledge [or ways modelling I wonder?] which at times runs ahead of a person's ability to verbalise ideas. It can be seen to shape thought, particularly in visual - spatial reasoning, and probably lightens cognitive load by externalising thought. It can run ahead of conscious thought - which is the interesting bit. The research was conducted to include people who had never been sighted, and yet made the same speech accompanying gestures as those who used communication knowing a speaker was watching their hands.
So far today, I have already noticed one conversation that took place and had a completely different subtext and discourse if you watched the hands - so I guess it was worth reading...
April 26, 2017
High quality scientific research and inquiry
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews