Spontaneous Hand Gestures Help Children Learn, Study
Christopher Philip
According to research by Susan Goldin-Meadow, spontaneous gestures, whether they results from spoken language, or done during sign language, can help children learn more effectively than not using gestures at all.
The research deems gestures as a flexible way of communication that works regardless of one’s ability to hear.
“Children who can hear use gesture along with speech to communicate as they acquire spoken language,” Goldin-Meadow said. “Those gesture-plus-word combinations precede and predict the acquisition of word combinations that convey the same notions. The findings make it clear that children have an understanding of these notions before they are able to express them in speech.”
In the study, children who could hear as well as deaf children when examined however, results showed that signing and gesturing was equally beneficial for both groups. In fact gestures predicted learning.
Goldin-Meadow found that when hearing parents communicated with their deaf children, they often employed some universal signs from ASL (American Sign Language) or other formal sign language as well as signs they had invented called “home signs.”
Overall, it was found that gestures were not simply a secondary modality to communication, but rather formed an additional imagery mechanism to transmit thoughts, feelings and ideas from one person to another. As such, gestures form a categorical distinct form of communication separate from speech.
Assuming no other forms of communication are available, gestures can form an entire method of communication, however, when it is paired with spoken language or with conventional sign language, they provide an additional way to promote learning.
My Take
As a parent who signed with my hearing son, I could and can still see the benefits to introducing sign language. Since I spent a lot of time with him as a primary care-giver, I can say that it opened up a much deeper level of communication much sooner than had I waited for spoken language to develop. Before he grew out of his first year of life, we were speaking to one another with signs. He even developed full sentences and was able to show me early glimpses of his personality. Watch video HERE (he does the sign for MOUSE, EAT and DAD and forms it into a sentence).
Today, at the age of 5, he’s already a strong reader and writer – much further ahead than many of his classmates.
He also uses gesture while speaking much to our amusement as he works to express his passion and emotions.
Image Credit: Rex Pe
Resources
Goldin-Meadow, S. Widening The Lens: What The Manual Modality Reveals About Language, Learning and Cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2019; 369-1651. 20190295 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0295