Credit: Provided by the National Science Foundation
Summary:
Why do we gesture? What role do simple hand movements play in some of the most fundamental aspects of language? Susan Goldin-Meadow has dedicated her career to asking, and answering, those big questions.
Full Text:
Why do we gesture? What role do simple hand movements play in some of the most fundamental aspects of language?
Susan Goldin-Meadow has dedicated her career to asking, and answering, those big questions. Her eponymous lab at the University of Chicago studies gesture’s role in cognition, development and the acquisition of verbal language. Goldin-Meadow visited the National Science Foundation (NSF) to discuss some of her most exciting work – examining how gesture can change the way we think. Some of her lab’s research even holds out the possibility that using and teaching gestures can help children learn mathematics. NSF’s Rob Margetta caught up with Goldin-Meadow after her lecture.