ERIC Number: EJ965429
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Jun
Pages: 6
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0010-0277
EISSN: N/A
The Gestures ASL Signers Use Tell Us when They Are Ready to Learn Math
Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Shield, Aaron; Lenzen, Daniel; Herzig, Melissa; Padden, Carol
Cognition, v123 n3 p448-453 Jun 2012
The manual gestures that hearing children produce when explaining their answers to math problems predict whether they will profit from instruction in those problems. We ask here whether gesture plays a similar role in deaf children, whose primary communication system is in the manual modality. Forty ASL-signing deaf children explained their solutions to math problems and were then given instruction in those problems. Children who produced many gestures conveying different information from their signs ("gesture-sign mismatches") were more likely to succeed after instruction than children who produced few, suggesting that mismatch can occur within-modality, and paving the way for using gesture-based teaching strategies with deaf learners. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)
Descriptors: Learning Readiness, Deafness, American Sign Language, Teaching Methods, Nonverbal Communication, Mathematics Education, Problem Solving, Mathematics Instruction, Children, Cognitive Processes, Schemata (Cognition)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A