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Doctor Susan Goldin-Meadow

Lecture Abstract


Hearing Gestures: How Our Hands Help Us Think

When people talk, they gesture. Gesturing is a widespread and robust phenomenon, occurring across ages, tasks, and cultures. Even congenitally blind individuals who have never seen gesture use it when talking to blind listeners. I have concentrated in my work on the spontaneous gestures that people use when they talk, and have demonstrated that gesture is not merely hand-waving. Gesture conveys substantive information - information that is often not expressed in the speech it accompanies. Thus, gesture can reveal secrets of the mind to those who pay attention. I begin by reviewing evidence that gesture reflects thought. I then ask whether gesture plays a role in shaping thought. I consider two non-mutually exclusive hypotheses: (1) Gesture reveals unspoken thoughts to listeners. If those listeners are able to interpret the information conveyed in the learner's gestures, they can provide input that can pave the way for change. (2) Gesture offers an alternate format for representing information. If that format is easier for the learner at certain stages of acquisition, the act of gesturing may save cognitive effort and pave the way for change. My goal is to explore what gesture can tell us about the mind and how it has a hand in shaping that mind.


Goldin-Meadow, S. The role of gesture in communication and thinking. Trends in Cognitive Science, 1999, 3, 419-429.

Goldin-Meadow, S., Nusbaum, H., Kelly, S., & Wagner, S. Explaining math: Gesturing lightens the load. Psychological Science, 2001, 12, 516-522.

Goldin-Meadow, S. Beyond words: The importance of gesture to researchers and learners. Child Development (Special Issue: New Direction for Child Development in the Twenty-First Century), 2000, 71, 231-239.