The role of gesture in learning

I am a fan of Susan Goldin-Meadow.  First off, she has a great name.  Beyond that, she asks the most intriguing questions, writes clearly, and develops good research design.  If that weren’t enough, her field specifically fascinates me: the confluence of gesture, language, cognition and learning.  Fortunately, she’s produced a tremendous body of work.

This article, The Role of Gesture in Learning: Do Children Use Their Hands to Change Their Minds?, in the same issue of Journal of Cognition and Development as the previous post on ToM, looks at the role of gesture in teaching and learning.  It doesn’t look at interpreting but after reading it think of this question: If gesture has such an important role in learning, what happens when the teaching is interpreter-mediated?  Is there a change if an intepreter produces a rendition which is text without gesture?

Theories of mind in transition

One of the challenges of interpreting for Deaf patients is that as children they are delayed in developing Theory of Mind (ToM).  It is my experience that the development is not as straightforward under some circumstances for deaf children as it is for hearing children; whether this is a deficit or difference I am not qualified to comment on.  Of course, Deaf people are not a homogenous population and there are a number of factors that contribute to the delay.  Some seem to be lack of linguistic input, co-occurring disability, imperfect early socialization and possibly attachment.