Exploring the dynamics of gestures in the construction of cognitive understanding.

As children communicate and construct cognitive insights, they use both their speech to express words and their hands to gesture. Research has shown that children are already able to express cognitive insights in gestures before they are able to put them into words. Gestures thus signal when a child is on the verge of learning something new (Goldin-Meadow, 2003). In this way, gestures are an important, yet overlooked hallmark of cognitive development. Since gestures are instances that occur in the moment, patterns displaying gestures’ leading role in the construction of cognitive insights are likely to be evident in children’s performance during a task (i.e. in real time). This project intends to explore the interplay between these real-time gestures and the child’s speech as he or she constructs cognitive understanding while performing a hands-on S&T task. This exploration will be done using new innovative methods that specifically emphasize the dynamical processes of how speech and gesture attune over time.