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- How our hands help us learn
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 9, Issue 5, 1 May 2005, Pages 234-241
Susan Goldin-Meadow and Susan M. Wagner
AbstractWhen 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.
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- On the relation of speech to language
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 4, Issue 5, 1 May 2000, Pages 187-196
Alvin M. Liberman and Doug H. Whalen
AbstractThere are two widely divergent theories about the relation of speech to language. The more conventional view holds that the elements of speech are sounds that rely for their production and perception on two wholly separate processes, neither of which is distinctly linguistic. Accordingly, the primary motor and perceptual representations are inappropriate for linguistic purposes until a cognitive process of some sort has connected them to language and to each other. The less conventional theory takes the speech elements to be articulatory gestures that are the primary objects of both production and perception. Those gestures form a natural class that serves a linguistic function and no other. Therefore, their representations are immediately linguistic, requiring no cognitive intervention to make them appropriate for use by the other components of the language system. The unconventional view provides the more plausible answers to three important questions: (1) How was the necessary parity between speaker and listener established in evolution, and how maintained? (2) How does speech meet the special requirements that underlie its ability, unique among natural communication systems, to encode an indefinitely large number of meanings? (3) What biological properties of speech make it easier than the reading and writing of its alphabetic transcription?
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- Gestures Orchestrate Brain Networks for Language Understanding
Current Biology, Volume 19, Issue 8, 28 April 2009, Pages 661-667
Jeremy I. Skipper, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Howard C. Nusbaum and Steven L. Small
SummaryAlthough the linguistic structure of speech provides valuable communicative information, nonverbal behaviors can offer additional, often disambiguating cues. In particular, being able to see the face and hand movements of a speaker facilitates language comprehension . But how does the brain derive meaningful information from these movements? Mouth movements provide information about phonological aspects of speech [2,3]. In contrast, cospeech gestures display semantic information relevant to the intended message [4,5,6]. We show that when language comprehension is accompanied by observable face movements, there is strong functional connectivity between areas of cortex involved in motor planning and production and posterior areas thought to mediate phonological aspects of speech perception. In contrast, language comprehension accompanied by cospeech gestures is associated with tuning of and strong functional connectivity between motor planning and production areas and anterior areas thought to mediate semantic aspects of language comprehension. These areas are not tuned to hand and arm movements that are not meaningful. Results suggest that when gestures accompany speech, the motor system works with language comprehension areas to determine the meaning of those gestures. Results also suggest that the cortical networks underlying language comprehension, rather than being fixed, are dynamically organized by the type of contextual information available to listeners during face-to-face communication.
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Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights reserved.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 3, Issue 11, 419-429, 1 November 1999
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The role of gesture in communication and thinking
Susan Goldin-Meadow*,tel: +1 773 702 2585 fax: +1 773 702 0320
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.