Pine Karen J, Lufkin Nicola, Messer David
Department of Psychology.
Dev Psychol. 2004 Nov;40(6):1059-1067. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.40.6.1059.
This research extends the range of domains within which children's gestures are found to play an important role in learning. The study involves children learning about balance, and the authors locate children's gestures within a relevant model of cognitive development--the representational redescription model (A. Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). The speech and gestures of children explaining a balance task were examined. Approximately one third of the children expressed one idea in speech and another in gesture. These children made significantly more learning gains than children whose gestures and speech matched. Children's gestures were an indicator, at pretest, of readiness to learn and of cognitive gains. The authors conclude that children's gestures provide crucial insight into their cognitive state and illuminate the process of learning and representational change.
这项研究拓展了发现儿童手势在学习中发挥重要作用的领域范围。该研究让儿童学习平衡知识，作者将儿童的手势置于一个相关的认知发展模型——表征重述模型（A. 卡米洛夫 - 史密斯，1992年）之中。研究人员考察了儿童在解释平衡任务时的言语和手势。大约三分之一的儿童在言语中表达一种想法，而在手势中表达另一种想法。与手势和言语相匹配的儿童相比，这些儿童取得了显著更多的学习进步。在预测试中，儿童的手势是学习准备程度和认知进步的一个指标。作者得出结论，儿童的手势为洞察其认知状态提供了关键线索，并阐明了学习和表征变化的过程。
