Hearing Gesture: How Our Hands Help Us Think

Author: Susan Goldin-MeadowPublisher: Belknap PressPaperback:ISBN 10: 0674018370ISBN 13: 978-0674018372Many 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 discovery: 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 S