Lecture 13 Flashcards
is gesture considered a language?
gesture isn’t considered a language because it lacks a lot of the more formal features. It tends to be a more abstract system of communication than language.
what do we know about gesture?
one way researchers have studied this are with these problems of mathematical equivalernce. They ask you this math question and your task is to solve for the blank. One reason that researchers use this problem is that they tend to be hard for kids. Often the answer they will give you is they will add all of these together. They aren’t actually thinking about equivalence between the 2 sides. Kids ability to do these problems predicts their later math performance. It can also predict things like your grades in math and highchool, your likelihood of dropping out of highschool or failing math in highchool. Researchers study this because it is something kids struggle with and they seem to matter. They also look at the gestures the kids are producing. They ask kids what they did to find the answer. They will say that they added all of the numbers on the left together and put it in the blank. Sometimes though what kids say with their words is different than what they do with their hands. Sometimes they will say that they added them but they will cover up the 4. In their hands they may be acknowledging things but not acknowledging that with their words. Then waht researchers do is all the kids who got it wrong, they give them training and say the equals sign means we want the 2 sides to be equal so we have to equal them. What they find is that those kids who mismatched, after the training they are now better at these tasks but the kids who were matching seemed to not benefit from the training. This is the idea that what we’re doing with out hands might reflect our understanding.
what can gestures tell you?
In looking at peoples gestures they can tell you a bit about their thoughts. It tends to be useful for predicting language development.
what is a gender mismatch?
- Gesture-speech mismatches
- Reflect verge of learning? →
children who produce mismatches
benefit most from instruction on
that task
(sometimes what we say through our words is different than what we communicate through our hands and our body.)
Why do we think gesture can change thought?
- Can help “lighten the load” in
difficult tasks → when children
gesture during learning, they
remember more!
(researchers have also suggested that we can use gestures to change our thought. Maybe it can help lighten the load in difficult tasks. Like if you are allowed to and encouraged to gesture you tend to remember more. You tend to do better. They do this with adults as well. They give you hard problems and either let you gesture normally or force you to sit on your hands. When people are forced to gesture they often learn or remember less. )
(with the same mathematical equivalence problem, if you allow kids to and teach them to gesture, they tend to do better and remember more of the training after they have gotten the gesture. )
Explain the Novack Paper.
LOOK AT THIS SLIDE 7
- Novack et al. (2014): examining
the impact of gesture vs
physical action - Why does gesture promote
learning? - Physical action?
- Abstract representation?
- Taught children to use physical
action, concrete gesture, or
abstract gesture - Examined the effect on learning,
and on generalization
is it just that its a physical action and are learning this through multiple domains? We know that physical action can be helpful for learning. In this paper they ask if it is just about the physical action or is it the idea that gesture is abstract? If you are doing a physicla action like moving things it is very concrete it is enacting on the world. BUT the thing about gesture is that its very abstract and representational. It doesn’t have these hard and fast rules. You can do it more abstractly. We often don’t want you to memorize things directly when you study but we want you to be able to abstractly generalize.
how they test this is bringing kids in, giving them math problems and teaching them to either use a physical action, like pickng them up and moving them. They are tuaght to say “I am going to make this side equal to that side. IN the physical side they are physically picking up the numbers. IN the concrete you are gesturing as thoughyou are picking them up directly. IN the abstract they teach you to point and say I am going to make this side qual to that side. They then exam their learning and look at how well you generalize this learning. One question is, if I train you on this problem and give you this problem, can you do it? Or what if I give you a different problem? Now you can’t use the exact strategy but you have to have a deeper abstract understanding of equivalence.
to solve this last one you really have to understand that you can’t just cancel anything out, you really have to have a deep understanding of equivalence.
What were the applications of Novack et al’s findings?
they find that all of those types of training, Now when we start to give them the near and far transfer problems, Now it is only the abstract gesture that seems to carry benefit. All action is good for learning but abstract gesture is best for generalization!
All action → good for learning!
Abstract gesture→ best for generalization
they find that all of those types of training, Now when we start to give them the near and far transfer problems, Now it is only the abstract gesture that seems to carry benefit. All action is good for learning but abstract gesture is best for generalization!
can gesture be a predictor of language?
yes.
