Citation

Goldin-Meadow S, Beilock S. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2010; 5(6): 664-674.

Affiliation

University of Chicago.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

21572548

PMCID

PMC3093190

Abstract

Recent research shows that our actions can influence how we think. A separate body of research shows that the gestures we produce when we speak can also influence how we think. Here we bring these two literatures together to explore whether gesture has an impact on thinking by virtue of its ability to reflect real-world actions. We first argue that gestures contain detailed perceptual-motor information about the actions they represent, information often not found in the speech that accompanies the gestures. We then show that the action features in gesture do not just reflect the gesturer's thinking-they can feed back and alter that thinking. Gesture actively brings action into a speaker's mental representations, and those mental representations then affect behavior-at times more powerfully than the actions on which the gestures are based. Gesture thus has the potential to serve as a unique bridge between action and abstract thought.

Language: en