COM 3404- Discussion Post #3

PART I

In countries such as Japan, China, India, and Iran there are gestures that convey different meanings in comparison with gestures we use in the United States. Find an example of a gesture from any country of the world that you did not know about. Provide a link and/or explain the gesture, the meaning, and compare (why or why not we interpret it differently or it does not exist in the United States). You may refer to gestures presented in the “Word of Gestures” video.
Based Novack et al. (2017) “Gesture as representational action” article, how can gestures lead learners to new ideas or concepts? Please explain in your own words but be specific.

PART II

First, watch video “Understanding and detecting deception” by Dr. Norah Dunbar and read Edward Hall’s article on deception detection. Then, respond to the following questions in specific, concrete, complete, and clear manner:

According to Dr. Dunbar, what is “response latency” and how does it relate to deception?
According Dr. Dunbar, why “gaze aversion” is not in the list of deception cues?

Steps required for completing the discussion assignment

Support your points by making specific connections to the readings, videos, and/or recordings for the week. Specifically, include citations or statements from the video(s) and reading(s) covered in the current module.

REFERENCES ARE ATTACHED AND LISTED BELOW:

Deception Detection

https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/a-world-of-gestures-culture-and-nonverbal-communication

Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665
DOI 10.3758/s13423-016-1145-z

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function

THEORETICAL REVIEW

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function

Miriam A. Novack

& Susan Goldin-Meadow1

Published online: 7 September 2016
# Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2016

Abstract A great deal of attention has recently been paid to
gesture and its effects on thinking and learning. It is well
established that the hand movements that accompany speech
are an integral part of communication, ubiquitous across cul-
tures, and a unique feature of human behavior. In an attempt to
understand this intriguing phenomenon, researchers have fo-
cused on pinpointing the mechanisms that underlie gesture
production. One proposal––that gesture arises from simulated
action (Hostetter & Alibali Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,
15, 495–514, 2008)––has opened up discussions about action,
gesture, and the relation between the two. However, there is
another side to understanding a phenomenon and that is to
understand its function. A phenomenon’s function is its
purpose rather than its precipitating cause––the why rather
than the how. This paper sets forth a theoretical framework
for exploring why gesture serves the functions that it does, and
reviews where the current literature fits, and fails to fit, this
proposal. Our framework proposes that whether or not gesture
is simulated action in terms of its mechanism––it is clearly not
reducible to action in terms of its function. Most notably,
because gestures are abstracted representations and are not
actions tied to particular events and objects, they can play
a powerful role in thinking and learning beyond the par-
ticular, specifically, in supporting generalization and
transfer of knowledge.

Keywords Gesture . Action . Learning . Representations

* Miriam A. Novack
mnovack1@gmail.com

Department of Psychology, University of Chicago,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Gestures are spontaneous hand movements that accompany
speech (Goldin-Meadow & Brentari, in press; Kendon,
2004; McNeill, 1992). They have the capacity to portray ac-
tions or objects through their form (iconic gestures), to repre-
sent abstract ideas (metaphoric gestures), to provide emphasis
to discourse structure (beat gestures), and to reference loca-
tions, items, or people in the world (deictic gestures). Children
gesture before they can speak (Bates, 1976; Goldin-Meadow,
2014) and people all over the world have been found to ges-
ture in one way or another (Kita, 2009). Gestures provide a
spatial or imagistic complement to spoken language and are
not limited to conventions and rules of formal linear-linguistic
systems. Importantly, gestures play a unique role in commu-
nication, thinking, and learning and have been shown to affect
the minds of both the people who see them and the people
who produce them (Goldin-Meadow, 2003).

There are many questions that arise when we think about
gesture: What makes us gesture? What types of events make
gesture likely? What controls how often we gesture? These
sorts of questions are all focused on the mechanism of gesture
production––an important line of inquiry exploring the struc-
tures and processes that underlie how gesture is produced.
Rather than ask about the mechanisms that lead to gesture,
we focused on the consequences of having produced ges-
ture––that is, on the function of gesture. What effects do ges-
tures have on the listeners who see them and the speakers who
produce them? What features of gestures contribute to these
effects? How do these features and functions inform our un-
derstanding of what exactly gestures are?

We propose that gestures produce effects on thinking and
learning, because they are representational actions. When we
say that gestures are representational actions, we mean that
they are meaningful substitutions and analogical stand-ins
for ideas, objects, actions, relations, etc. This use of the term
representational should not be confused with the term

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.3758/s13423-016-1145-z&domain=pdf

mailto:mnovack1@gmail.com

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function2
653 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665

representational gesture––a category of gestures that look like
the ideas and items to which they refer (i.e., iconic and meta-
phoric gestures). Our proposal that gestures are representa-
tional is meant to apply to all types of nonconventional ges-
tures, including representational gestures (iconics, meta-
phorics), deictic gestures, and even beat gestures. Iconic ges-
tures can represent actions or objects; deictic gestures draw
attention to the entities to which they refer; beat gestures re-
flect discourse structure. Most of this paper explores the func-
tions of iconic and deictic gestures, but we believe that our
framework can be applied to all (non-conventional) gestures.

Gestures are representational in that they represent some-
thing other than themselves, and they are actions in that they
involve movements of the body. Most importantly, the fact
that gestures are representational actions differentiates them
from full-blown instrumental actions, whose purpose is to
affect the world by directly interacting with it (e.g., grabbing
a fork, opening a canister). In addition, gestures are unlike
movements for their own sake (Schachner & Carey, 2013),
whose purpose is the movement itself (e.g., dancing, exercis-
ing). Rather, gestures are movements whose power resides in
their ability to represent actions, objects, or ideas.

Gestures have many similarities to actions simply, because
they are a type of action. Theories rooted in embodied cogni-
tion maintain that action experiences have profound effects on
how we view objects (James & Swain 2011), perceive other’s
actions (Casile & Giese, 2006), and even understand language
(Beilock, Lyons, Mattarella-Micke, Nusbaum, & Small,
2008). The Gesture as Simulated Action (GSA) framework
grew out of the embodied cognition literature. The GSA pro-
poses that gestures are the manifestation of action programs,
which are simulated (but not actually carried out) when an
action is imagined (Hostetter & Alibali, 2008). Following at
least some accounts of embodied cognition (see Wilson, 2002,
for review), the GSA suggests that when we think of an action
(or an object that can be acted upon), we activate components
of the motor network responsible for carrying out that action,
in essence, simulating the action. If this simulation surpasses
the Bgesture threshold,^ it will spill over and become a true
motor expression––an overt gesture. The root of gesture, then,
according to this framework, is simulation––partial motor ac-
tivation without completion.

The GSA framework offers a useful explanation of how
gesturing comes about (its mechanism) and the framework
highlights gesture’s tight tie to action. However, this frame-
work is primarily useful for understanding how gestures are
produced, not for how they are understood, unless we assume
that gesture comprehension (like language comprehension;
Beilock et al., 2008) also involves simulating action. More
importantly, the framework does not necessarily help us un-
derstand what gestures do both for the people who produce
them and for the people who see them. We suggest that view-
ing gestures as simulated actions places too much emphasis on

the action side of gesture and, in so doing, fails to explain the
ways in which gesture’s functions differ from those of instru-
mental actions. The fact that gesture is an action is only one
piece of the puzzle. Gesture is a special kind of action, one that
represents the world rather than directly impacting the world.
For example, producing a twisting gesture in the air near, but
not on, a jar will not open the jar; only performing the twisting
action on the jar itself will do that. We argue that this repre-
sentational characteristic of gesture is key to understanding
why gesturing occurs (its function).

Our hypothesis is that the effects gesture has on thinking
and learning grow not only out of the fact that gesture is itself
an action, but also out of the fact that gesture is abstracted
away from action––the fact that it is representational.
Importantly, we argue that this framework can account for
the functions gesture serves both for producers of gesture
and for perceivers of gesture. We begin by defining what we
mean by gesture, and providing evidence that adults sponta-
neously view gesture-like movements as representational.
Second, we review how gesture develops over ontogeny,
and use evidence from developmental populations to suggest
a need to move from thinking about gesture as simulated ac-
tion to thinking about it as representational action. Finally, we
review evidence that gesture can have an impact on cognitive
processes, and explore this idea separately for producers of
gesture and for receivers of gesture. We show that the effects
that gesture has on both producers and receivers are distinct
from the effects that instrumental action has. In each of these
sections, our goal is to develop a framework for understanding
gesture’s functions, thereby creating a more comprehensive
account of cause in the phenomenon of gesture.

Part 1: What makes a movement a gesture?

Before we can unpack how gesture’s functions relate to its
classification as representational action, we must establish
how people distinguish gestures from the myriad of hand
movements they encounter. Gestures have a few obvious fea-
tures that differentiate them from other types of movements.
The most obvious is that gestures happen off objects, in the air.
This feature makes gestures qualitatively different from
object-directed actions (e.g., grabbing a cup of coffee, typing
on a keyboard, stirring a pot of soup), which involve manip-
ulating objects and causing changes to the external world. A
long-standing body of research has established that adults (as
well as children and infants) process object-directed move-
ments in a top-down, hierarchical manner, encoding the goal
of an object-directed action as most important and ignoring
the particular movements used to achieve that goal (Baldwin
& Baird, 2001; Bower & Rinck, 1999; Searle, 1980; Trabasso
& Nickels, 1992; Woodward, 1998; Zacks, Tversky, & Iyer,
2001). For example, the goal of twisting the lid of a jar is to

654 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665
Gesture as representational action: A paper about function3

open the jar––not just to twist one’s hand back and forth while
holding onto the jar lid.

In contrast to actions that are produced to achieve external
goals, if we interpret the goal of an action to be the movement
itself, we are inclined to describe that movement in detail,
focusing on its low-level features. According to Schachner
and Carey (2013), adults consider the goal of an action to be
the movement itself if the movement is irrational (e.g., moving
toward an object and then away from it without explanation)
or if it is produced in the absence of objects (e.g., making the
same to-and-fro movements but without any objects present).
These Bmovements for the sake of movement^ can include
dancing, producing ritualized movements, or exercising. For
example, the goal of twisting one’s hands back and forth in the
air when no jar is present might be to just stretch or to exercise
the wrist and fingers.

So where does gesture fit in? Gestures look like movements
for their own sake in that they occur off objects and, in this
sense, resemble dance, ritual, and exercise. However, gestures
are also similar to object-directed actions in that the move-
ments that comprise a gesture are not the purpose of the ges-
ture––those movements are a means to accomplish something
else––communicating and representing information. Gestures
also differ from object-directed actions, however, in their pur-
pose––the purpose of an object-directed action is to accom-
plish a goal with the object (e.g., to open a jar, grab a cup of
coffee); the purpose of a gesture is to represent information
and perhaps communicate that information (e.g., to show
someone how to open a jar, to tell someone that you want that
cup of coffee). The question then is––how is an observer to
know when a movement is a communicative symbol (i.e., a
gesture) and when it is an object-directed action or a move-
ment produced for its own sake?

To better understand how people know when they have
seen a gesture, we asked adults to describe scenes in which a
woman moved her hands under three conditions (Novack,
Wakefield, & Goldin-Meadow, 2016). In the first condition
(action on objects), the woman moved two blue balls into a
blue box and two orange balls into an orange box. In the
second condition (action off objects with the objects present),
the balls and boxes were present, but the woman moved her
hands as if moving the objects without actually touching them.
Finally, in the third condition (action with the objects absent),
the woman moved her hands as if moving the objects, but in
the absence any objects.

In addition to the presence or absence of objects, another
feature that differentiates object-directed actions from gestures
is co-occurrence with speech. Although actions can be pro-
duced along with speech, they need not be. In contrast, ges-
tures not only routinely co-occur with speech, but they are also
synchronized with that speech (Kendon, 1980; McNeill,
1992). People do, at times, spontaneously produce gesture
without speech and, in fact, experimenters have begun to

instruct participants to describe events using their hands and
no speech (Gibson, Piantadosi, Brink, Bergen, Lim & Saxe,
2013; Goldin-Meadow, So, Özyürek, & Mylander, 2008;
Hall, Ferreira & Mayberry, 2013). However, these silent ges-
tures, as they are known, look qualitatively different from the
co-speech gestures that speakers produce as they talk (Goldin-
Meadow, McNeill & Singleton, 1996; Özçalışkan, Lucero &
Goldin-Meadow, 2016; see Goldin-Meadow & Brentari, in
press, for discussion). To explore this central feature of ges-
ture, Novack et al. (2016) also varied whether the actor’s
movements in their study were accompanied by filtered
speech. Movements accompanied by speech-like sounds
should be more likely to be seen as a gesture (i.e., as a repre-
sentational action) than the same movements produced with-
out speech-like sounds.

Participants’ descriptions of the event in the video were
coded according to whether they described external goals
(e.g., Bthe person placed balls in boxes^), movement-based
goals (e.g., Ba woman waved her hands over some balls and
boxes^), or representational goals (i.e., Bshe showed how to
sort objects^). As expected, all participants described the
videos in which the actor moved the objects as depicting an
external-goal, whereas participants never gave this type of
response for the empty-handed videos (i.e., videos in which
the actor did not touch the objects). However, participants
gave different types of responses as a function of the presence
or absence of the objects in the empty-handed movement con-
ditions. When the objects were there (but not touched), ap-
proximately 70 % of observers described the movements in
terms of representational goals. In contrast, when the objects
were not there (and obviously not touched), only 30 % of ob-
servers mentioned representational goals. Participants increased
the number of representational goals they gave when the actor’s
movements were accompanied by filtered speech (which made
the movement feel like part of a communicative act).

Observers thus systematically described movements that
have many of the features of gesture––no direct contact with
objects, and co-occurrence with speech––as representational
actions. Importantly, participants made a clear distinction be-
tween the instrumental object-directed action, and the two
empty-handed movements (movements in the presence of ob-
jects and movements in the absence of objects), indicating that
actions on objects have clear external goals, and actions off
objects do not. Empty-handed movements are often interpreted
as movements for their own sake. But if the conditions are
right, observers go beyond the movements they see to make
rich inferences about what those movements can represent.

Part 2: Learning from gestures over development

We now know that, under the right conditions, adults will
view empty-handed movements as more than just movements

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function4
655 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665

for their own sake. We are perfectly positioned to ask how the
ability to see movement as representational action develops
over ontogeny. In this section, we look at both the production
and comprehension of gesture in the early years, focusing on
the development of two types of gestures––deictic gestures
and iconic gestures.

Development of deictic gestures

We begin with deictic gestures, because these are the first
gestures that children produce and understand. Although deic-
tic gestures have a physically simple form (an outstretched
arm and an index finger), their meaning is quite rich,
representing social, communicative, and referential intentions
(Tomasello, Carpenter & Liszkowski, 2007). Interestingly,
deictic gestures are more difficult to produce and understand
than their simple form would lead us to expect.

Producing deictic gestures Infants begin to point between 9
and 12 months, even before they say their first words (Bates,
1976). Importantly, producing these first gesture forms signals
advances in children’s cognitive processes, particularly with
respect to their language production. For example, lexical
items for objects to which a child points are soon found in that
child’s verbal repertoire (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005).
Similarly, pointing to one item (e.g., a chair) while producing
a word for a different object (e.g., Bmommy^) predicts the
onset of two-word utterances (e.g., Bmommy’s chair^)
(Goldin-Meadow & Butcher, 2003; Iverson & Goldin-
Meadow, 2005). Not only does the act of pointing preview
the onset of a child’s linguistic skills, but it also plays a causal
role in the development of those skills. One and a half-year-
old children given pointing training (i.e., they were told to
point to pictures of objects as the experimenter named them)
increased their own pointing in spontaneous interactions with
their caregivers, which led to increases in their spoken vocab-
ulary (LeBarton, Goldin-Meadow & Raudenbush, 2015).
Finally, these language-learning effects are unique to pointing
gestures, and do not arise in response to similar-looking in-
strumental actions like reaches. Eighteen-month-old children
learn a novel label for an object if an experimenter says the
label while the child is pointing at the object but not if the child
is reaching to the object (Lucca & Wilborn, 2016). Thus, as
early as 18 months, we see that the representational status of
the pointing gesture can have a unique effect on learning (i.e.,
language learning), an effect not found for a comparable in-
strumental act.

Perceiving deictic gestures Children begin to understand
other’s pointing gestures around the same age as they them-
selves begin to point. At 12 months, infants view points as
goal-directed (Woodward & Guajardo, 2002) and recognize
the communicative function of points (Behne, Liszkowski,

Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2012). Infants even understand that
pointing hands, but not nonpointing fists, communicate infor-
mation to those who can see them (Krehm, Onishi &
Vouloumanos, 2014). As is the case for producing pointing
gestures, seeing pointing gestures results in effects that are not
found for similar-looking instrumental actions. For example,
Yoon, Johnson, and Csibra (2008) found that when 9-month-
old children see someone point to an object, they are likely to
remember the identity of that object. In contrast, if they see
someone reach to an object (an instrumental act), 9-month-
olds are likely to remember the location of the object, not its
identity. Thus, as soon as children begin to understand
pointing gestures, they seem to understand them as represen-
tational actions, rather than as instrumental actions.

Development of iconic gestures

Young children find it difficult to interpret iconic gestures,
which, we argue, is an outgrowth of the general difficulty they
have with interpreting representational forms (DeLoache,
1995). Interestingly, even though instrumental actions often
look like iconic gestures, interpreting instrumental actions
does not present the same challenges as interpreting gesture.

Producing iconic gestures Producing iconic gestures is rare
in the first years of life. Although infants do produce a few
iconic gestures as early as 14 months (Acredolo & Goodwyn,
1985, 1988), these early gestures typically grow out of parent-
child play routines (e.g., while singing the itsy-bitsy spider),
suggesting that they are probably not child-driven representa-
tional inventions. It is not until 26 months that children begin
to reliably produce iconic gestures in spontaneous settings
(Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2011) and in elicited labora-
tory experiments (Behne, Carpenter & Tomasello, 2014) and,
even then, these iconic forms are extremely rare. Of the ges-
tures that young children produce, only 1-5 % are iconic
(Iverson, Capirci & Caselli, 1994; Nicoladis, Mayberry &
Genesee, 1999; Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). In con-
trast, 30 % of the gestures that adults produce are iconic
(McNeill, 1992).

If gestures are simply a spillover from motor simulation (as
the GSA predicts), we might expect children to begin produc-
ing a gesture for a given action as soon as they acquire the
underlying action program for that action (e.g., we would
expect a child to produce a gesture for eating as soon as the
child is able to eat by herself). But children produce actions on
objects well before they produce gestures for those actions
(Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2011). In addition, according
to the GSA, gesture is produced when an inhibitory threshold
is exceeded. Because young children have difficulty with in-
hibitory control, we might expect them to produce more ges-
tures than adults, which turns out not to be the case
(Özçalışkan & Goldin-Meadow, 2011). The relatively late

656 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665
Gesture as representational action: A paper about function5

onset and paucity of iconic gesture production is thus not
predicted by the GSA. It is, however, consistent with the pro-
posal that gestures are representational actions. As represen-
tational actions, gestures require sophisticated processing
skills to produce and thus would not be expected in very
young children.

Perceiving iconic gestures Understanding iconic gestures is
also difficult for toddlers. At 18 months, children are no more
likely to associate an iconic gesture (e.g., hopping two fingers
up and down to represent the rabbit’s ears as it hops) or an
arbitrary gesture (holding a hand shaped in an arbitrary con-
figuration to represent a rabbit) with an object (Namy,
Campbell, & Tomasello, 2004). It is not until the middle of
the second year that children begin to appreciate the relation
between an iconic gesture and its referent (Goodrich &
Hudson Kam, 2009; Marentette & Nicoladis, 2011; Namy,
Campbell, & Tomasello, 2004; Namy, 2008; Novack,
Goldin-Meadow, & Woodward, 2015). In many cases, chil-
dren fail to correctly see the link between an iconic gesture and
its referent until age 3 or even 4 years (e.g., when gestures
represent the perceptual properties of an object; Hodges,
Özçalışkan, & Williamson, 2015; Tolar, Lederberg, Gokhale,
& Tomasello, 2008).

The relatively late onset of children’s comprehension of
iconic gestures is also consistent with the proposal that ges-
tures are representational actions. If gestures were simulations
of actions, then as soon as an infant has a motor experience,
the infant ought to be able to interpret that motor action as a
gesture just by accessing her own motor experiences. But
young children who are able to understand an instrumental
action are not necessarily able to understand a gesture for that
action. Consider, for example, a 2-year-old who is motorically
capable of putting a ring on a post. If an adult models the ring-
putting-on action for the child, she responds by putting the
ring on the post (in fact, children put the ring on the post even
if the adult tries to get the ring on the post but doesn’t succeed,
i.e., if the adult models a failed attempt). If, however, the adult
models a put-ring-on-post gesture (she shows how the ring
can be put on the post without touching it), the 2-year-old
frequently fails to place the ring on the post (Novack et al.,
2015). In other words, at a time when a child understands the
goal of an object-directed action and is able to perform the
action, the child is still unable to understand a gesture for that
action. This difficulty makes sense on the assumption that
gestures are representational actions since children of this
age are generally known to have difficulty with representation
(DeLoache, 1995).

As another example, young children who can draw infer-
ences from a hand that is used as an instrumental action (e.g.,
an object-directed reach) fail to draw inferences from the same
hand used as a gesture. Studies of action processing find that
infants as young as 6-months can use the shape of someone’s

reaching hand to correctly predict the intended object of the
reach (Ambrosini et al, 2013; Filippi & Woodward, 2016). For
example, infants expect someone whose hand is shaped in a
pincer grip to reach toward a small object, and someone whose
hand is shaped in a more open grip to reach toward a large
object (Ambrosini et al, 2013)––but they do so only when the
handshape is embedded in an instrumental reach. Two-and-a-
half-year-olds presented with the identical hand formations as
gestures rather than reaches (i.e., an experimenter holding a
pincer handshape or open handshape in gesture space) are
unable to map the hand cue onto its referent (Novack,
Filippi, Goldin-Meadow & Woodward, 2016). The fact that
children can interpret handshape information accurately in
instrumental actions by 6 months, but are unable to interpret
handshape information in gesturing actions until 2 or 3 years,
adds weight to the proposal that gestures are a special type of
representational action.

Part 3: Gesture’s functions are supported by its
action properties and its representational properties

Thus far, we have discussed how people come to see move-
ments as gestures and have used findings from the develop-
mental literature to raise questions about whether gesture is
best classified as simulated action. We suggest that, even if
gesture arises from simulated action programs, to understand
fully its effects, we also need to think about gesture as repre-
sentational action. Under this account, simulated actions are
considered nonrepresentational, and it is the difference be-
tween representational gesture and veridical action that is
key to understanding the effects that gesture has on producers
and perceivers. In this section, we examine similarities and
differences between gesture and action and discuss the impli-
cations of these similarities and differences for communica-
tion, problem solving, and learning.

Gesture versus action in communication

As previously mentioned, one way in which gestures differ
from actions is in how they relate to spoken language. Unlike
object-directed actions, gestures are seamlessly integrated
with speech in both production (Bernardis & Gentilucci,
2006; Kendon, 1980; Kita & Özyürek, 2003) and comprehen-
sion (Kelly, Ozyurek, & Maris, 2010), supporting the claim
that speech and gesture form a single integrated system
(McNeill, 1992). Indeed, the talk that accompanies gesture
plays a role in determining the meaning taken from that ges-
ture. For example, a spiraling gesture might refer to ascending
a staircase when accompanied by the sentence, BI ran all the
way up,^ but to out-of-control prices when accompanied by
the sentence, BThe rates are rising every day.^ Conversely, the
gestures that accompany speech can influence the meaning

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function6
657 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665

taken from speech. For example, the sentence, BI ran all the
way up,^ is likely to describe mounting a spiral staircase when
accompanied by an upward spiraling gesture, but a straight
staircase when accompanied by an upward moving point.
We discuss the effects of gesture-speech integration for the
speakers who produce gesture, as well as the listeners who
perceive it.

Producing gesture in communication Gesture production is
spontaneous and temporally linked to speech (Loehr, 2007;
McNeill, 1992). Moreover, the tight temporal relation found
between speech and gesture is not found between speech and
instrumental action. For example, if adults are asked to explain
how to throw a dart using the object in front of them (an
instrumental action) or using just their hands with no object
(a gesture), they display a tighter link between speech and the
accompanying dart-throwing gesture than between speech
and the accompanying dart-throwing action (Church, Kelly,
& Holcombe 2014). Other signatures of the gesture-speech
system also seem to be unique to gesture, and are not found
in instrumental actions. For example, gestures are more often
produced with the right hand (suggesting a link to the left-
hemisphere speech system), whereas self-touching adaptors
(e.g., scratching, pushing back the hair), which are instrumen-
tal actions, are produced with both hands (Kimura, 1973).

The act of producing representational gesture along with
speech has been found to have an effect on speakers them-
selves. Gesturing while speaking can improve the speaker’s
lexical access and fluency (Graham & Heywood, 1975;
Rauscher, Krauss, & Chen, 1996), help the speaker package
information (Kita, 2000), and even lighten the speaker’s work-
ing memory load (Goldin-Meadow, Nusbaum, Kelly, &
Wagner, 2001; Wagner, Nusbaum, & Goldin-Meadow,
2004). Moreover, movements that are not gestures, such as
meaningless hand movements, do not have the same load-
lightening effects on the speaker as gestures do (Cook, Yip,
& Goldin-Meadow, 2012).

Perceiving gesture in communication The gestures that ac-
company a speaker’s talk often emphasize information found
in that talk. Seeing gestures has been found to improve com-
prehension for listeners, particularly for bilinguals with low-
proficiency in their second language (Sueyoshi & Hardison,
2005) or for young children (McNeil, Alibali & Evans, 2000).
Seeing gestures also has been found to improve listeners’
mental imagery, particularly with respect to spatial topics
(Driskell & Radtke, 2003). In a meta-analysis of gesture com-
prehension studies, messages with gesture were shown to
have a moderate, but significant, comprehension advantage
for the listener compared with messages without gesture
(Hostetter, 2011). But gestures also can provide nonredundant
information not found in the speaker’s talk (Church, Garber &
Rogalski 2007; Goldin-Meadow 2003; Kelly, 2001; Kelly,

Barr, Church & Lynch, 1999; McNeill, 1992), and listeners
are able to take advantage of information conveyed uniquely
in gesture (Goldin-Meadow & Sandhofer, 1999). For exam-
ple, listeners are more likely to infer the meaning of an indirect
request (e.g., BI’m getting cold^) if that speech is accompanied
by a gesture (point to an open window) than if it is produced
without the gesture (Kelly et al., 1999). Gesture serves a func-
tion not only for speakers but also for listeners.

Moreover, the effects of perceiving gesture are not the same
as the effects of perceiving instrumental action. For example,
although adults can seamlessly and easily integrate informa-
tion conveyed in speech with gesture, they often fail to inte-
grate that information with instrumental action. For example,
adults can easily ignore actions that are incongruent with the
speech with which they are produced, but they have difficulty
ignoring gestures that are incongruent with the speech they
accompany, suggesting a difference in the relative strength
of speech-gesture integration versus speech-action integration
(Kelly, Healy, Özyürek, & Holler, 2014). Thus, gesture has a
different relationship to speech than instrumental action does
and, in turn, has a different effect on listeners than instrumen-
tal action.

Gesture versus action in problem solving

Gesture not only has an impact on communication, but it also
plays a role in more complex cognitive processes, such as
conceptualization and problem-solving. Again, we find that
gesture and instrumental action do not influence problem-
solving in the same way.

Producing gesture in problem-solving Viewing gestures as
representational action acknowledges that gesture has its base
in action. Indeed, gestures often faithfully reflect our action
experiences on objects in the world. Take, for example, the
Tower of Hanoi task (Newell & Simon, 1972). In this task,
participants are asked to move a number of disks, stacked
from largest to smallest, from one peg to another peg; the goal
is to recreate the stacked arrangement without ever placing a
larger disk on top of a smaller disk by moving only one disk at
a time. Solving the task involves actions (i.e., moving the
disks) and the gestures that participants use to later explain
their solution represent elements of the actions that they pro-
duced while solving the task in the first place. More specifi-
cally, participants who solved the problem using a physical
tower produce more grasping gestures and curved trajectories
than participants who solved the problem using a computer
program in which disk icons could be dragged across the
screen using a mouse curser (Cook & Tanenhaus, 2009).
Gestures thus reflect a speaker’s action experiences in the
world by re-presenting traces of those actions.

As noted earlier, gesturing about an action accomplishes
nothing tangible––gesturing about moving disks does not

658 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665
Gesture as representational action: A paper about function7

actually move the disks. Even though gesture does not accom-
plish anything physical, it can change our cognition in ways
that action does not. Using the Tower of Hanoi task again as
an example, we see that individuals who gesture about how
they moved the disks encode the problem differently from
individuals who do not gesture. In one study using this para-
digm, after explaining how they solved the task and gesturing
while doing so, participants were surreptitiously given a new
stack of disks that looked like the original stack but differed in
weight––the largest disk was now the lightest, the smallest
disk became the heaviest and could no longer be lifted with
one hand (Goldin-Meadow & Beilock, 2010). Participants
who had initially produced one-handed gestures when de-
scribing how to move the smallest disk were adversely affect-
ed by the switch in weights––the more these participants ges-
tured about the small disk with one hand, the slower their time
to solve the problem after the disk weights had been switched
(recall that the small disk could now not be moved with one
hand). By gesturing about the smallest disk with one hand,
participants set themselves up to think of the disk as light––the
unanticipated switch in disk weights violated this expectation,
leading to relatively poor performance after the switch.
Importantly, if participants are not asked to provide explana-
tions before the switch––and thus do not gesture––the switch
effect disappears (Beilock & Goldin-Meadow, 2010).
Moreover, participants who are asked to act on the objects
and actually move the disks while explaining their solution
(instead of gesturing) also do not show the switch effect
(Trofatter, Kontra, Beilock & Goldin-Meadow, 2014).
Gesture can have an effect (in this case, a detrimental effect)
on thinking, and it can have a more powerful effect on think-
ing than action does.

Finally, although gestures contain many components of the
actions to which they refer, they also drop out components.
Gestures are not, and cannot be, exact replicas of the actions to
which they refer. Using the Tower of Hanoi task again as a
case study, we see that one cannot veridically represent, in a
single gesture, both the force needed to lift a heavy disk and
the speed at which the disk is lifted. Incorporating into gesture
the actual force needed to lift the disk (while lifting nothing)
will necessarily result in a much faster movement than was
made when the disk was actually lifted. Conversely, incorpo-
rating into gesture the speed at which the disk actually moved
(while moving nothing) would not require the same force as is
necessary with an object in hand. Thus, gestures are not just
smaller versions of actions; they have fundamentally different
features from actions and, perhaps as a result, have different
functional effects on cognitive processes.

Perceiving gesture in problem-solving The Tower of Hanoi
task also exemplifies the impact that perceiving gesture has on
the listener’s conceptualizations. As mentioned in the last sec-
tion, participants gesture differently as a reflection of how they

solved the Tower of Hanoi task, producing smaller arches to
represent the movement of the disks if they had solved the task
on a computer than if they had solved the task with actual
disks (Cook & Tanenhaus, 2009). Participants who saw those
gestured explanations, but did not act on the Tower them-
selves, were influenced by the gestures they saw when they
were later asked to solve the problem themselves on a com-
puter. Participants who watched someone explain how to
solve the Tower of Hanoi task using gestures with high arches
were more likely to produce higher arching movements them-
selves on the computer (even though it is not necessary to arch
the movement at all on the computer) than participants who
saw someone use gestures with smaller arches––in fact, the
bigger the gestured arcs, the bigger the participant’s move-
ments on the computer screen. The gestures we see can influ-
ence our own actions.

Gesture versus action in learning

Gesture also can lead learners to new ideas or concepts, both
when learners see gesture in instruction and when they pro-
duce gesture themselves. Learners are more likely to profit
from a lesson in which the teacher gestures than from a lesson
in which the teacher does not gesture (Cook, Duffy & Fenn,
2013; Ping & Goldin-Meadow 2008; Singer & Goldin-
Meadow, 2005; Valenzeno, Alibali & Klatzky, 2003). When
children gesture themselves, they are particularly likely to
discover new ideas (Goldin-Meadow, Cook & Mitchell,
2009), retain those ideas (Cook, Mitchell & Goldin-
Meadow, 2008), and generalize the ideas to novel problem
types (Novack, Congdon, Hemani-Lopez & Goldin-
Meadow, 2014). We argue that gesture can play this type of
role in learning, because it is an action and thus engages the
motor system but also because it represents information.

Learning from producing gesture Producing one’s own ac-
tions has been found to support learning from infancy through
adulthood (see Kontra, Goldin-Meadow, & Beilock, 2012, for
a review). For example, 3-month-olds given experience wear-
ing Velcro mittens that helped them grab the objects they
reached for, come to interpret successfully other’s goal-
directed reaches in a subsequent habituation test. In contrast,
infants given experience simply watching someone else obtain
objects while wearing the mittens do not come to understand
other’s reaches (Gerson & Woodward, 2014; Sommerville,
Woodward & Needham, 2005). Even college-aged students
benefit from active experience in learning contexts. When
physics students are given the chance to feel the properties
of angular momentum first-hand (by holding a system of
two bicycle wheels spinning around an axel), they score
higher on a test of their understanding of force than their
counterparts who simply had access to a visible depiction of
the angular momentum (i.e., watching the deflection of a laser

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function8
659 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665

pointer connected to the bicycle system) (Kontra, Lyons,
Fischer, & Beilock, 2015). Finally, neuroimaging data suggest
that active experience manipulating objects leaves a lasting
neural signature that is found when learners later view the
objects without manipulating them (James, 2010; James &
Swain, 2011; Longcamp et al., 2003; Prinz, 1997). For exam-
ple, children given active experience writing letters later show
greater activation in motor regions when just passively
looking at letters in the scanner compared with children who
were given practice looking at letters without writing them
(James, 2010). Given that gestures are a type of action and
that action affects learning, we might expect learning from
gesture to resemble learning from action.

In fact, recent work suggests that learning via producing
gesture engages a similar motor network as learning via pro-
ducing action. When children were taught how to solve math-
ematical equivalence problems while producing gesture strat-
egies, they later showed greater activation in motor regions
when passively solving the types of problems they had learned
about compared with children who learned without gesture
(Wakefield, et al., 2016). The same motor regions have been
implicated in studies looking at the effect of producing action
on learning (James 2010; James & Atwood, 2009; James &
Swain, 2011), suggesting that gesture and action are similar in
the effect they have on the brain.

But gestures differ from actions in a number of ways, and
these differences might influence the impact that producing
gesture has on learning. First, as mentioned earlier, actions are
produced on objects; gestures are not. To compare the effects
of learning via gesture versus learning via action, Novack and
colleagues (2014) taught third-graders to produce actions on
objects or gestures off objects during a math lesson. Children
were shown movable number tiles placed over numbers in
problems, such as 4 + 7 + 2 =__ + 2. Children in the Action
condition were taught to pick up the first two number tiles (4
and 7) and then hold them in the blank. Children in the
Concrete Gesture condition were taught to move their hands
as if they were picking up the tiles and holding them in the
blank but without actually moving them. Finally, children in
the Abstract Gesture condition were taught to produce a V-
point gesture to the first two numbers and then a point to the
blank. In all three conditions, children were using their hands
to represent a strategy for solving the problem––the grouping
strategy in which the two numbers on the left side of the
equation that are not found on the right are added and the
sum is put in the blank. But the conditions differed in whether
the hands actually moved objects. Although children in all
three conditions learned how to solve the types of problems
on which they had been trained, only children in the gesture
conditions were able to transfer what they had learned to
problems with a different format (near-transfer problems,
e.g., 4 + 7 + 2 = 4 + __; far-transfer problems, e.g., 4 + 7 +
2 = __+ 6). Children in the Action condition seemed to have

gotten Bstuck^ in the concrete nature of the movements, learn-
ing how to solve the problem at a shallow level that did not
lead to transfer. Even more surprising, children in the concrete
gesture condition were less successful on far-transfer prob-
lems than children in the abstract gesture condition, suggest-
ing that the closer a gesture’s form is to action, the closer the
gesture comes to behaving like action.

Understanding how learners are affected by gesture com-
pared to object-directed action is particularly important given
the widespread use of manipulatives in educational settings
(see Mix, 2010, for review). Manipulatives, or external sym-
bols, are thought to help learners off-load some of the cogni-
tive burden involved in maintaining abstract ideas in mind.
Children can use concrete external symbols as a reference to
be revisited, freeing up cognitive resources for other process-
ing tasks. Importantly, external symbols can be moved and
acted on, allowing for the integration of physical, motor pro-
cesses with abstract conceptual ideas. Despite these potential
benefits of learning through action, and consistent with findings
on learning through gesture, research from the education liter-
ature casts doubt on manipulative-based learning. Interacting
with a manipulative can encourage learners to focus on the
object itself rather than its symbolic meaning (Uttal, Scudder
& DeLoache, 1997). The perceptual features of objects can be
distracting (McNeil, Uttall, Jarvin & Sternberg, 2009), and
young children in particular may lose track of the fact that the
manipulatives not only are objects but also stand for something
else (DeLoache, 1995). Gesture has the potential to distance
learners from the concrete details of a manipulative, thus en-
couraging them to approach the concept at a deeper level.

Learning from perceiving gesture The gestures that children
see in instruction also have beneficial effects on learning
(Cook, et al., 2013; Ping & Goldin-Meadow 2008; Singer &
Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Valenzeno, et al., 2003). Some have
suggested that seeing gestures can help learners connect ab-
stract ideas, often presented in speech, to the concrete physical
environment (Valenzeno et al., 2003). Seeing gesture also
might support learning through the same mechanisms as pro-
ducing gesture, that is, by engaging the motor system. Listeners
recruit their own motor systems when listening to speakers who
gesture (Ping, Goldin-Meadow, & Beilock, 2014), and neuro-
imaging research suggests that recruiting the motor system may
be key in learning. Adults learn more foreign words if they are
taught those words while seeing someone produce meaningful
iconic gestures compared with seeing someone produce mean-
ingless movements (Macedonia, Muller, & Friederici, 2011).
Those adults then activate areas of their premotor cortex when
later recognizing words initially learned while seeing gesture,
implicating the motor cortex in learning from seeing gesture.

Another way that perceiving gesture might have an impact
on learning is through its ability to integrate with speech.
Children are more likely to learn from a math lesson if the

660 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665
Gesture as representational action: A paper about function9

teacher provides one problem-solving strategy in speech si-
multaneously with a different, complementary strategy in ges-
ture (S1+G2) than if the teacher provides the same two strat-
egies in speech (S1→S2), which, of course, must be produced
sequentially (Singer & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). Moreover, it
is gesture’s ability to be produced simultaneously with speech
that appears to promote learning. Children are more likely to
learn from the math lesson if the gesture strategy and the
speech strategy occur at the same time (S1+G2) than if the
speech strategy occurs first, followed by the gesture strategy
(S1→G2). In other words, the benefit of simultaneous
speech+gesture instruction disappears when the two strategies
are presented sequentially rather than simultaneously in time
(Congdon et al, 2016). A question for future work is whether
learning through action will also be affected by timing––that
is, will learning differ when an action problem-solving strate-
gy is presented simultaneously with speech, compared to
when the same action strategy is presented sequentially with
speech? We suspect that this is yet another area where learning
via gesture will differ from learning via action.

Part 4. Open questions and areas for future research

We have shown that, although gesture may be an effective
learning tool, at least in part, because it is a type of action, it
is the fact that gesture is abstracted action, or representational
action, that likely gives rise to its far-reaching learning out-
comes. Viewing gesture as representational action explains
many of the benefits gesture confers in instruction and also
may explain cases where using gesture in instruction is sub-
optimal. For example, gesture instruction is less useful than
action instruction for 2-year-olds (Novack et al., 2015), likely
because, at this young age, children are only beginning to be
able to decode representational forms. Gesture instruction also
has been shown to be less useful than action instruction in
children with a rudimentary understanding of a concept
(Congdon & Levine, 2016), raising the possibility that a
learner’s initial understanding of a task affects that learner’s
ability to profit from a lesson on the task containing represen-
tational action. In the final section, we explore open questions
of this sort and discuss how their answers can inform the
proposed framework.

One major topic that we have touched on in this paper, but
that would benefit from additional research, is the relative
effect of producing gesture versus perceiving gesture. We
have provided evidence suggesting that gesture’s functions
arise from its status as representational action both for the
producer of gesture and for the perceiver of gesture. Thus,
we believe that our framework can be applied to both situa-
tions. However, the magnitude of gesture’s effects may not be
identical for doing versus seeing gesture (Goldin-Meadow
et al., 2012). Moreover, there might be effects on thinking

and learning that depend on whether a person is perceiving
or producing a gesture. For example, gesture’s ability to sup-
port learning, retention, and generalization may depend on
whether the gesture is produced or perceived. When children
are shown a gesture that follows speech and is thus produced
on its own, they do no better after instruction than when the
same information is displayed entirely in speech (Congdon
et al., 2016). In other words, learning from a seen gesture
may depend on its being produced simultaneously with
speech. In contrast, when children are told to produce a ges-
ture, they profit from that instruction (Brooks & Goldin-
Meadow, 2015) and retain what they have learned (Cook,
et al., 2008) even when the gesture is produced on its own
without speech. Learning from a produced gesture does not
seem to depend on its being produced along with speech.
Producing versus perceiving gesture might then function
through distinct mechanisms, although we suggest that ges-
ture’s status as a representational form is still essential to both.
Additional studies that directly compare learning from seeing
versus doing gesture are needed to determine whether the
mechanisms that underlie these two processes are the same
or different, and whether seeing versus doing gesture interacts
with interpreting gesture as representational action. For exam-
ple, it may be easier to think of a gesture as representational
when producing it (even if it’s a novel action) than when
seeing someone else produce the gesture.

A related open question is whether movement is categorized
as gesture in the same way for perceiving versus producing
movement. We reviewed evidence about when perceivers of a
movement see the movement as representational (Novack et al.,
2016). However, it is unclear whether the same features lead
producers of a movement to see the movement as representa-
tional. This question is particularly relevant in tasks where
learners are taught to produce movements during a lesson
(Goldin-Meadow et al., 2009). These movements are meaning-
less to the learner at the beginning of the lesson. The question is
whether the movements become meaningful, and therefore rep-
resentational, during the lesson and, if so, when? Do children
think of these hand movements as Bgesture^ when they are
initially taught them, or do they think of them first as
Bmovement-for-its-own sake^ and only gradually come to see
the movements as Bgesture^ as their conceptual understanding of
the lesson shifts? If the process is gradual, might there be markers
or features within the movement itself that an observer could use
to determine when a rote movement has become a true gesture?

This possibility brings into focus whether learners need to
be aware of the representational status of a gesture in order to
benefit from that gesture during instruction. Although gesture-
training studies find that, on average, instruction with gesture
supports learning better than instruction without gesture (see
Novack & Goldin-Meadow, 2015, for review), there is always
variability in learner outcomes. Might a learner’s ability to
profit from a gestural movement be related to that learner’s

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function10
661 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665

ability to categorize that movement as meaningful? Perhaps
only learners who see a movement as gesture will benefit from
incorporating that movement into instruction. Alternatively,
learners may be able to benefit from gesture in instruction
without being explicitly aware of its representational proper-
ties. Thomas and Lleras (2009) found that adults asked to
produce arm movements that were consistent with the solution
to an unrelated problem were more likely to subsequently
solve the problem, compared to adults asked to produce arm
movements that were inconsistent with the solution to the
problem (see also Brooks & Goldin-Meadow, 2015, for sim-
ilar evidence in children). Importantly, these adults were not
aware of the link between the arm movements and the
problem-solving task (they were told that the arm movements
were for Bexercise breaks^). Thus, at least in some cases,
learners do not need to consciously see a movement as mean-
ingful in order to learn from it.

Another open question related to the issue of categorizing
movement as gesture or instrumental action is whether there
are in-between cases. Clark (1996) has identified a class of
movements called demonstrations––actions produced with
the intention of showing something to someone. For example,
if a mother were to show her child how to open a jar, she could
hold the jar out in front of the child, twist open the lid in an
exaggerated manner, and then put the lid back on the jar,
handing the jar to the child to try the action himself. This
object-focused movement has elements of an instrumental ac-
tion––the mother’s hands directly interact with the object and
cause a physical change. However, the movement also has
obvious elements of representational actions––in the end, the
jar is not open and the movement is clearly performed for
communicative (as opposed to purely instrumental) purposes.
As another example, consider Bhold-ups^––gestures in which
someone holds up an object to display it to someone else (e.g.,
a child holds up her bottle to draw it to her mother’s attention).
Hold-ups have some aspects of gesture––they are intended to
communicate and are like deictic pointing gestures in that they
indicate a particular object. They also have aspects of instru-
mental actions; they are produced directly on objects.
Developmentally, hold-ups tend to emerge before pointing
gestures (Bates Camaioni & Volterra, 1975), lending credence
to the idea that hold-ups may not be as representational as
empty-handed gestures. The important question from our
point of view is whether hold-ups function like gestures for
the child. It turns out that they do, in at least in one sense; they
predict the onset of various aspects of spoken language. For
example, hold-ups have been counted as deictic gestures in
studies finding that early gesture predicts the size of a child’s
subsequent spoken vocabulary (Rowe & Goldin-Meadow,
2009), the introduction of particular lexical items into a child’s
spoken vocabulary (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005), and
the developmental onset of noun phrases (Cartmill,
Hunsicker & Goldin-Meadow, 2014).

In terms of developmental questions, although we have
reviewed evidence exploring the features that encourage
adults to view a hand movement as a representational action
(Novack et al., 2016), it is an open question as to what infants
think about the movements they see. Infants have a special
ability to process actions on objects (Woodward, 1998), but
how do infants process actions off objects, that is, gestures?
One possibility is that infants think of gestures as movements
for their own sake––seeing them as mere hand waving
(Schachner & Carey, 2013). Another possibility is that, de-
spite the fact that infants may not be able to correctly interpret
the meaning of a gesture, they can nonetheless categorize the
gesture as a representational act. Just as infants seem to know
that speech can communicate even if they cannot understand
that speech (Vouloumanos, Onishi & Pogue, 2012), infants
might know that gestures are meant to represent without being
able to understand what they represent. Knowing what infants
think about gesture (and whether they categorize it as a unique
form) would contribute to our understanding of the develop-
ment of gesture processing.

Finally, with respect to how gestures affect learning, addi-
tional research is needed to determine when in the learning
process, and for which content domains, gesture instruction is
particularly helpful. Gesture’s status as representational action
might mean that it is most useful for some content domains,
and not others. For example, gesture has been shown to sup-
port generalization and retention in math instruction. But math
is a relatively abstract subject. Gesture may be less useful in
domains grounded in physical experience, such as physics,
where direct action on objects has been found to support learn-
ing (Kontra et al., 2015; generalization has yet to be studied in
these domains). There are, however, domains that are ground-
ed in physical experience, such as dance, where practicing
gesture-like movements has been found to promote learning
better than practicing the actual dance movements (Kirsh,
2010, 2011). Dancers often Bmark^ their movements, a form
of practice in dance that involves producing attenuated ver-
sions of dance moves. Marking is comparable to gesturing in
that the movements are produced to represent other move-
ments, rather than to have a direct effect on the world (i.e.,
they represent movements that will, in the end, be seen by an
audience, see Kirsh, 2011). Dancers use marking when prac-
ticing on their own, as well as when communicating with
other dancers (Kirsh, 2010). This marking seems to function
like gesture in that it promotes learning, even though dance is
grounded in physical action.

Conclusions

In this paper, we present a framework for understanding
gesture’s function. We propose that gesture has unique
effects on thinking and learning because of its status as

662 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665
Gesture as representational action: A paper about function11

representational action. More specifically, the fact that
gesture is representational action, and not instrumental
action, is critical to its capacity to support generalization
beyond the specific and to support retention over a period
of time. Our proposal is agnostic about whether gesture’s
role in learning depends on its being embodied, and about
whether the Gesture-as-Simulated-action framework can
account for how gesture is produced, its mechanism. The
proposal is designed to account for why gesture is pro-
duced, that is, for the functions it serves, particularly in a
learning context. Our proposal is thus not inconsistent
with the mechanistic account of gesture production pro-
posed in the GSA framework (Hostetter & Alibali, 2008).
But it does offer another perspective—a functional per-
spective that highlights the differences between gestures
and other types of actions.

Although in some cases mechanism and function are
critically related, in other cases they are not. For example,
consider an alligator’s nightly sojourn into the Mississippi
River. The functional explanation for this phenomenon is
that the alligator is cold-blooded, and in the evening the
river water is warmer than the air; entering the water at
night serves the function of helping the alligator maintain
its body temperature during the overnight hours.
However, the mechanism by which this behavior comes
about has nothing to do with temperature and depends
instead on changes in sunlight. The alligator heads for
the water in response to fading light, a relationship that
was discovered by experimentally dissociating tempera-
ture from light. Alligators approach the water as the light
fades whether or not the temperature changes and do not
approach the water as the temperature drops unless the
light fades (Lang, 1976). Thus, the temperature-
regulation function of the behavior (going into water to
regulate temperature) is different from its light-sensitive
mechanism (going into the water in response to changes
in light). We therefore cannot assume that the function of
a phenomenon is the complement of its mechanism and
must explore function in its own right. Our hope is that by
expanding the investigation of gesture to include a frame-
work built around its functions, we will come to a more
complete understanding of how and why we move our
hands when we talk.

Acknowledgments This work was supported by NIH grant number
R01-HD047450 and NSF grant number BCS-0925595 to Goldin-
Meadow, NSF grant number SBE-0541957 (Spatial Intelligence and
Learning Center, Goldin-Meadow is a co-PI), and a grant from the
Institute of Education Sciences (R305 B090025) to S. Raudenbush in
support of Novack. SGM thanks Bill Wimsatt and Martha McClintock
for introducing her to the distinction between mechanism and function,
and for convincing her of its importance in understanding scientific ex-
planation back in 1978 when we taught our first Mind course together in
the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago.

References

Acredolo, L. P., & Goodwyn, S. W. (1985). Symbolic gesturing in lan-
guage development: A case study. Human Development, 28, 40–49.
doi:10.1159/000272934

Acredolo, L., & Goodwyn, S. (1988). Symbolic gesturing in normal
infants. Child Development, 59, 450–466. doi:10.2307/1130324

Ambrosini, E., Reddy, V., de Looper, A., Costantini, M., Lopez, B., &
Sinigaglia, C. (2013). Looking ahead: Anticipatory gaze and motor
ability in infancy. PLoS One, 8, e67916. doi:10.1371/journal.
pone.0067916

Baldwin, D. A., & Baird, J. A. (2001). Discerning intentions in dynamic
human action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 171–178.
doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01615-6

Bates, E. (1976). Language and context: The acquisition of pragmatics
(Vol. 13). New York: Academic Press.

Bates, E., Camaioni, L., & Volterra, V. (1975). The acquisition of perfor-
matives prior to speech. Merrill-qalmer Quarterly of Behavior and
Development, 21, 205–226.

Behne, T., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2014). Young children create
iconic gestures to inform others. Developmental Psychology, 50,
2049–2060. doi:10.1037/a0037224

Behne, T., Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2012).
Twelve-month-olds’ comprehension and production of pointing.
British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 30, 359–375.
doi:10.1111/j.2044-835X.2011.02043.x

Beilock, S. L., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2010). Gesture changes thought by
grounding it in action. Psychological Science, 21, 1605–1610.
doi:10.1177/0956797610385353

Beilock, S. L., Lyons, I. M., Mattarella-Micke, A., Nusbaum, H. C., &
Small, S. L. (2008). Sports experience changes the neural processing
of action language. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America, 105, 13269–13273.
doi:10.1073/pnas.0803424105

Bernardis, P., & Gentilucci, M. (2006). Speech and gesture share the same
communication system. Neuropsychologia, 44, 178–190.
doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.05.007

Bower, G. H., & Rinck, M. (1999). Goals as generators of activation in
narrative understanding. In S. R. Goldman, A. C. Graesser, & P. van
den Broek (Eds.), Narrative comprehension, causality, and coher-
ence: Essays in honor of Tom Trabasso (pp. 111–134). Mahwah:
Erlbaum.

Brooks, N., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2015). Moving to learn: How guiding
the hands can set the stage for learning. Cognitive Science.
doi:10.1111/cogs.12292

Cartmill, E. A., Hunsicker, D., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2014). Pointing
and naming are not redundant: Children use gesture to modify nouns
before they modify nouns in speech. Developmental Psychology, 50,
1660–1666. doi:10.1037/a0036003

Casile, A., & Giese, M. A. (2006). Nonvisual motor training influences
biological motion perception. Current Biology, 16, 69–74.
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2005.10.071

Church, R. B., Garber, P., & Rogalski, K. (2007). The role of gesture in
memory and social communication. Gesture, 7, 137–158.
doi:10.1075/gest.7.2.02bre

Church, R. B., Kelly, S., & Holcombe, D. (2014). Temporal synchrony
between speech, action and gesture during language production.
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29, 345–354. doi:10.1080
/01690965.2013.857783

Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge, GB: Cambridge Univ.
Press.

Congdon, E. L., & Levine, S. C. (2016) Learning to measure through
action and gesture: Children’s starting state matters. Manuscript
submitted for publication.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000272934

http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1130324

http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0067916

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01615-6

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037224

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.2011.02043.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797610385353

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0803424105

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.05.007

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12292

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036003

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2005.10.071

http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/gest.7.2.02bre

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2013.857783

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function12
663 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665

Congdon, E. L., Novack, M. A., Brooks, N. B., Hemani-Lopez, N.,
O’Keefe, L. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2016). Better together:
Simultaneous presentation of speech and gesture in math instruction
supports generalization and retention. Manuscript submitted for
publication.

Cook, S. W., Duffy, R. G., & Fenn, K. M. (2013). Consolidation and
transfer of learning after observing hand gesture. Child
Development, 84, 1863–1871. doi:10.1111/cdev.12097

Cook, S. W., Mitchell, Z., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2008). Gesturing
makes learning last. Cognition, 106, 1047–1058. doi:10.1016/j.
cognition.2007.04.010

Cook, S. W., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2009). Embodied communication:
Speaker’s gestures affect listeners’ actions. Cognition, 113, 98–
104. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.06.006.Embodied

Cook, S. W., Yip, T. K., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). Gestures, but not
meaningless movements, lighten working memory load when
explaining math. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27, 594–
610. doi:10.1080/01690965.2011.567074

DeLoache, J. S. (1995). Early understanding and use of symbols: The
model model. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 4, 109–
113. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.ep1077240

Driskell, J. E., & Radtke, P. H. (2003). The effect of gesture on speech
production and comprehension. Human Factors: The Journal of the
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 45, 445–454. doi:10.1518
/hfes.45.3.445.27258

Filippi, C., & Woodward, A. L. (2016). Action experience changes atten-
tion to kinematic cues. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 19. doi:10.3389
/fpsyg.2016.00019

Gerson, S. A., & Woodward, A. L. (2014). Learning from their own
actions: The unique effect of producing actions on infants’ action
understanding. Child Development, 85, 264–277. doi:10.1111
/cdev.12115

Gibson, E., Piantadosi, S. T., Brink, K., Bergen, L., Lim, E., & Saxe, R.
(2013). A noisy-channel account of crosslinguistic word order var-
iation. Psychological Science, 24, 1079–1088. doi:10.1177
/0956797612463705

Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003). Hearing gesture: How our hands help us
think. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goldin-Meadow, S. (2014). How gesture helps children learn language.
In I. Arnon, M. Tice, C. Kurumada, & B. Estigarribia (Eds.),
Language in interaction: Studies in honor of Eve V. Clark (pp.
157–171). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Goldin-Meadow, S., & Beilock, S. L. (2010). Action’s influence on
thought: The case of gesture. Perspectives on Psychological
Science, 5, 664–674. doi:10.1177/1745691610388764

Goldin-Meadow, S., & Brentari, D. (in press). Gesture, sign and lan-
guage: The coming of age of sign language and gesture studies.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences. online first. doi:10.1017
/S0140525X15001247

Goldin-Meadow, S., & Butcher, C. (2003). Pointing toward two-word
speech in young children. In S. Kita (Ed.), Pointing: Where lan-
guage, culture, and cognition meet (pp. 85–107). Mahwah, NJ:
Earlbaum Associates.

Goldin-Meadow, S., Cook, S. W., & Mitchell, Z. A. (2009). Gesturing
gives children new ideas about math. Psychological Science, 20,
267–272. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02297

Goldin-Meadow, S., Levine, S. L., Zinchenko, E., Yip, T. K.-Y., Hemani,
N., & Factor, L. (2012). Doing gesture promotes learning a mental
transformation task better than seeing gesture. Developmental
Science, 15, 876–884. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01185.x

Goldin-Meadow, S., McNeill, D., & Singleton, J. (1996). Silence is lib-
erating: Removing the handcuffs on grammatical expression in the
manual modality. Psychological Review, 103, 34–55.

Goldin-Meadow, S., Nusbaum, H., Kelly, S. D., & Wagner, S. (2001).
Explaining math: gesturing lightens the load. Psychological Science,
12, 516–522. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00395

Goldin-Meadow, S., & Sandhofer, C. M. (1999). Gesture conveys sub-
stantive information about a child’s thoughts to ordinary listeners.
Developmental Science, 2, 67–74. doi:10.1037/0033-295
X.103.1.34

Goldin-Meadow, S., So, W. C., Ozyurek, A., & Mylander, C. (2008). The
natural order of events: How speakers of different languages repre-
sent events nonverbally. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 105, 9163–9168. doi:10.1073/pnas.0710060105

Goodrich, W., & Hudson Kam, C. L. (2009). Co-speech gesture as input
in verb learning. Developmental Science, 12, 81–87. doi:10.1111
/j.1467-7687.2008.00735.x

Graham, J. A., & Heywood, S. (1975). The effects of elimination of hand
gestures and of verbal codability on speech performance. European
Journal of Social Psychology, 5, 189–195. doi:10.1002
/ejsp.2420050204

Hall, M. L., Ferreira, V. S., & Mayberry, R. I. (2013). Investigating con-
stituent order change with elicited pantomime: A functional account
of SVO emergence. Cognitive Science, 38, 943–972. doi:10.1111
/cogs.12105

Hodges, L. E., Özçalışkan, Ş., & Williamson, R. A. (2015). How early do
children understand different types of iconicity in gesture?
Proceedings of the 39th Boston University conference on language
development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Hostetter, A. B. (2011). When do gestures communicate? A meta-analy-
sis. Psychological Bulletin, 137, 297–315. doi:10.1037/a0022128

Hostetter, A. B., & Alibali, M. W. (2008). Visible embodiment: Gestures
as simulated action. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 495–514.
doi:10.3758/PBR.15.3.495

Iverson, J. M., Capirci, O., & Caselli, M. C. (1994). From communication
to language in two modalities. Cognitive Development, 9, 23–43.
doi:10.1016/0885-2014(94)90018-3

Iverson, J. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture paves the way for
language development. Psychological Science, 16, 368–371.
doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01542.x

James, K. H. (2010). Sensori-motor experience leads to changes in visual
processing in the developing brain. Developmental Science, 13,
279–288. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00883.x

James, K. H., & Atwood, T. P. (2009). The role of sensorimotor learning
in the perception of letter-like forms: Tracking the causes of neural
specialization for letters. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 26, 91–110.
doi:10.1080/02643290802425914

James, K. H., & Swain, S. N. (2011). Only self-generated actions create
sensori-motor systems in the developing brain. Developmental
Science, 14, 673–678. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01011.x

Kelly, S. D. (2001). Broadening the units of analysis in communication:
Speech and nonverbal behaviours in pragmatic comprehension.
Journal of Child Language, 28, 325–349. doi:10.1017
/S0305000901004664

Kelly, S. D., Barr, D. J., Church, R. B., & Lynch, K. (1999). Offering a
hand to pragmatic understanding: The role of speech and gesture in
comprehension and memory. Journal of memory and Language, 40,
577–592. doi:10.1006/jmla.1999.2634

Kelly, S. D., Özyürek, A., & Maris, E. (2010). Two sides of the same coin:
Speech and gesture manually interact to enhance comprehension.
Psycho log i ca l S c i ence , 2 1 , 260– 267 . d o i : 10 . 1177
/0956797609357327

Kelly, S. D., Healy, M., Özyürek, A., & Holler, J. (2014). The processing
of speech, gesture, and action during language comprehension.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 517–523. doi:10.3758
/s13423-014-0681-7

Kendon, A. (1980). Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process
of utterance. In M. R. Key (Ed.), The relationship of verbal and
nonverbal communication (pp. 207–227). The Hague, the
Netherlands: Mouton.

Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12097

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.04.010

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.06.006.Embodied

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2011.567074

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep1077240

http://dx.doi.org/10.1518/hfes.45.3.445.27258

http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00019

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12115

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797612463705

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691610388764

http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X15001247

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02297

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01185.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00395

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.1.34

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0710060105

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00735.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420050204

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12105

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022128

http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.3.495

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0885-2014(94)90018-3

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01542.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00883.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02643290802425914

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01011.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000901004664

http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1999.2634

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797609357327

http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0681-7

664 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665
Gesture as representational action: A paper about function13

Kimura, D. (1973). Manual activity during speaking–I. Righthanders.
Neuropsychologia, 11, 45–50. doi:10.1016/0028-3932(73)90063-8

Kirsh, D. (2010). Thinking with the body. In S. Ohlsson & R.
Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd annual conference of
the cognitive science society (pp. 2864–2869). Austin, TX:
Cognitive Science Society. doi:10.1145/2037296.2037303

Kirsh, D. (2011). How marking in dance constitutes thinking with the
body. Versus: Quaderni di Studi Semiotici, 113–115, 179–210.

Kita, S. (2000). How representational gestures help speaking. In D.
McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 162–185). Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.

Kita, S. (2009). Cross-cultural variation of speech-accompanying gesture:
A review. Language and Cognitive Processes, 24(2), 145–167.
doi:10.1080/01690960802586188

Kita, S., & Özyürek, A. (2003). What does cross-linguistic variation
in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal?:
Evidence for an interface representation of spatial thinking
and speaking. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 16–32.
doi:10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00505-3

Kontra, C., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Beilock, S. L. (2012). Embodied
learning across the life span. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4, 731–
739. doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01221.x

Kontra, C., Lyons, D. J., Fischer, S. M., & Beilock, S. L. (2015). Physical
experience enhances science learning. Psychological Science, 26,
737–749. doi:10.1177/0956797615569355

Krehm, M., Onishi, K. H., & Vouloumanos, A. (2014). I see your point:
Infants under 12 months understand that pointing is communicative.
Journal of Cognition and Development, 15, 527–538. doi:10.1080
/15248372.2012.736112

Lang, J. W. (1976). Amphibious behavior of Alligator mississippiensis:
Roles of a circadian rhythm and light. Science, 191, 575–577.
doi:10.1126/science.1251194

LeBarton, E. S., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Raudenbush, S. (2015).
Experimentally-induced increases in early gesture lead to increases
in spoken vocabulary. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16,
199–220. doi:10.1080/15248372.2013.858041

Loehr, D. (2007). Aspects of rhythm in gesture and speech. Gesture, 7,
179–214.

Longcamp, M., Anton, J. L., Roth, M., & Velay, J. L. (2003). Visual
presentation of single letters activates a premotor area involved
in writing. NeuroImage, 19, 1492–1500. doi:10.1016/S1053-
8119(03)00088-0

Lucca, K. R., & Wilborn, P. M. (2016). Communicating to learn: Infants’
pointing gestures facilitate fast mapping. Manuscript submitted for
publication.

Macedonia, M., Muller, K., & Friederici, A. D. (2011). The impact of
iconic gestures on foreign language word learning and its neural
substrate. Human Brain Mapping, 32, 982–998. doi:10.1002
/hbm.21084

Marentette, P., & Nicoladis, E. (2011). Preschoolers’ interpretations of
gesture: Label or action associate? Cognition, 121, 386–399.
doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2011.08.012

McNeil, N., Alibali, M., & Evans, J. L. (2000). The role of gesture in
children’s language comprehension: Now they need it, now they
don’t. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 24, 131–150. doi:10.1006
/jmla.2000.2752

McNeil, N. M., Uttal, D. H., Jarvin, L., & Sternberg, R. J. (2009). Should
you show me the money? Concrete objects both hurt and help per-
formance on mathematics problems. Learning and Instruction, 19,
171–184. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.03.005

McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mix, K. S. (2010). Spatial tools for mathematical thought. In K. S. Mix, L.
B. Smith, & M. Gasser (Eds.), Space and language. New York:
Oxford University Press.

Namy, L. L. (2008). Recognition of iconicity doesn’t come for free.
Developmental Science, 11, 841–846. doi:10.1111/j.1467-
7687.2008.00732.x

Namy, L. L., Campbell, A. L., & Tomasello, M. (2004). The changing
role of iconicity in non-verbal symbol learning: A U-shaped trajec-
tory in the acquisition of arbitrary gestures. Journal of Cognition
and Development, 5, 37–57. doi:10.1207/s15327647jcd0501_3

Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human problem-solving.
EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Nicoladis, E., Mayberry, R. I., & Genesee, F. (1999). Gesture and early
bilingual development. Developmental Psychology, 35, 514.
doi:10.1037/0012-1649.35.2.514

Novack, M. A., Congdon, E., Hemani-Lopez, N., & Goldin-Meadow, S.
(2014). From action to abstraction: Using the hands to learn math.
Psycho log i ca l S c i ence , 2 5 , 903–910 . d o i : 10 . 1177
/0956797613518351

Novack, M. A., Filippi, C., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Woodward, A. (2016).
Actions speak louder than gestures when you are 2-years-old.
Mansucript submitted for publication.

Novack, M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2015). Learning from gesture: How
our hands change our minds. Educational Psychology Review, 27,
205–412. doi:10.1007/s10648-015-9325-3

Novack, M. A., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Woodward, A. (2015). Learning
from gesture: How early does it happen? Cognition, 142, 138–147.
doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.05.018

Novack, M. A., Wakefield, E. M., & Goldin-meadow, S. (2016). What
makes a movement a gesture? Cognition, 146, 339–348.
doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.10.014

Özçalışkan, Ş., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Do parents lead their chil-
dren by the hand? Journal of Child Language, 32, 481–505.
doi:10.1017/S0305000905007002

Özçalışkan, Ş., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2011). Is there an iconic gesture
spurt at 26 months. Integrating gestures: The interdisciplinary na-
ture of gesture. Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins.

Özçalışkan, S., Lucero, C., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2016). Does language
shape silent gesture? Cognition, 148, 10–18. doi:10.1016/j.
cognition.2015.12.001

Ping, R. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2008). Hands in the air: Using
ungrounded iconic gestures to teach children conservation of quan-
tity. Developmental Psychology, 44, 1277–1287. doi:10.1037/0012-
1649.44.5.1277

Ping, R., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Beilock, S. (2014). Understanding ges-
ture: Is the listener’s motor system involved. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 195–204. doi:10.1037
/a0032246

Prinz, W. (1997). Perception and action planning. European Journal of
Cognitive Psychology, 9, 129–154. doi:10.1080/713752551

Rauscher, F., Krauss, R. M., & Chen, Y. (1996). Gesture, speech, and
lexical access: The role of lexical movements in speech production.
Psychological Science, 7, 226–231. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.
tb00364.x

Rowe, M. L., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2009). Differences in early gesture
explain SES disparities in child vocabulary size at school entry.
Science, 323, 951–953. doi:10.1126/science.1167025

Schachner, A., & Carey, S. (2013). Reasoning about Birrational^ actions:
When intentional movements cannot be explained, the movements
themselves are seen as the goal. Cognition, 129, 309–327.
doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.07.006

Searle, J. R. (1980). The intentionality of intention and action. Inquiry, 22,
253–280. doi:10.1080/00201747908601876

Singer, M. A., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Children learn when their
teacher’s gestures and speech differ. Psychological Science, 16, 85–
89. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00786.x

Sommerville, J. A., Woodward, A. L., & Needham, A. (2005). Action
experience alters 3-month-old infants’ perception of others’ actions.
Cognition, 96, B1–B11. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2004.07.004

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(73)90063-8

http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2037296.2037303

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01690960802586188

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00505-3

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01221.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797615569355

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2012.736112

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1251194

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2013.858041

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00088-0

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.21084

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2011.08.012

http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jmla.2000.2752

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.03.005

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00732.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327647jcd0501_3

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.35.2.514

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797613518351

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10648-015-9325-3

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.05.018

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.10.014

http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000905007002

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.12.001

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.44.5.1277

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0032246

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713752551

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00364.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1167025

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.07.006

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00201747908601876

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00786.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2004.07.004

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function14
665 Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:652–665

Sueyoshi, A., & Hardison, D. M. (2005). The role of gestures and facial
cues in second language listening comprehension. Language
Learning, 55, 661–699. doi:10.1111/j.0023-8333.2005.00320.x

Thomas, L. E., & Lleras, A. (2009). Swinging into thought: Directed
movement guides insight in problem solving. Psychonomic
Bulletin & Review, 16, 719–723. doi:10.3758/PBR.16.4.719

Tolar, T. D., Lederberg, A. R., Gokhale, S., & Tomasello, M. (2008). The
development of the ability to recognize the meaning of iconic signs.
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 13, 225–240.
doi:10.1093/deafed/enm045

Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., & Liszkowski, U. (2007). A new look at
infant pointing. Child Development, 78, 705–722. doi:10.1111
/j.1467-8624.2007.01025.x

Trabasso, T., & Nickels, M. (1992). The development of goal plans of
action in the narration of a picture story. Discourse Processes, 15,
249–275. doi:10.1080/01638539209544812

Trofatter, C., Kontra, C., Beilock, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2014).
Gesturing has a larger impact on problem-solving than action, even
when action is accompanied by words. Language, Cognition and
Neuroscience, 30, 251–260. doi:10.1080/23273798.2014.905692

Uttal, D., Scudder, K., & DeLoache, J. (1997). Manipulatives as symbols:
A new perspective on the use of concrete objects to teach mathe-
matics. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 18, 37–54.
doi:10.1016/S0193-3973(97)90013-7

Valenzeno, L., Alibali, M. W., & Klatzky, R. (2003). Teachers’ gestures
facilitate students’ learning: A lesson in symmetry. Contemporary
Educational Psychology, 28, 187–204. doi:10.1016/S0361-476
X(02)00007-3

Vouloumanos, A., Onishi, K. H., & Pogue, A. (2012). Twelve-month-old
infants recognize that speech can communicate unobservable inten-
tions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, 109, 12933–12937. doi:10.1073
/pnas.112105710

Wagner, S., Nusbaum, H., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2004). Probing the
mental representation of gesture: Is handwaving spatial? Journal
of Memory and Language, 50, 395–407. doi:10.1016/j.
jml.2004.01.002

Wakefield, E. M., Congdon, E. L, Novack, M. A., Goldin-Meadow, S., &
James, K. (2016). Learning math by hand: The neural effects of
gesture-based instruction in 8-year-old children. Manuscript sub-
mitted for publication.

Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic
Bulletin & Review, 9, 625–636. doi:10.3758/BF03196322

Woodward, A. L. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal object
of an actor’s reach. Cognition, 69, 1–34. doi:10.1016/S0010-
0277(98)00058-4

Woodward, A. L., & Guajardo, J. J. (2002). Infants’ understanding of the
point gesture as an object-directed action. Cognitive Development,
17, 1061–1084. doi:10.1016/S0885-2014(02)00074-6

Yoon, J. M., Johnson, M. H., & Csibra, G. (2008). Communication-
induced memory biases in preverbal infants. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 105, 13690–13695. doi:10.1073
/pnas.0804388105

Zacks, J. M., Tversky, B., & Iyer, G. (2001). Perceiving, remembering,
and communicating structure in events. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: General, 130, 29–58. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.130.1.29

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0023-8333.2005.00320.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.4.719

http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enm045

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01025.x

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01638539209544812

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2014.905692

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0193-3973(97)90013-7

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0361-476X(02)00007-3

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.112105710

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2004.01.002

http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BF03196322

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00058-4

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2014(02)00074-6

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0804388105

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.130.1.29

Abstract

Part 1: What makes a movement a gesture?

Part 2: Learning from gestures over development

Development of deictic gestures

Development of iconic gestures

Part 3: Gesture’s functions are supported by its action properties and its representational properties

Gesture versus action in communication

Gesture versus action in problem solving

Gesture versus action in learning

Part 4. Open questions and areas for future research

Conclusions

References

Turn in your highest-quality paper
Get a qualified writer to help you with

“ COM 3404- Discussion Post #3 ”

Get high-quality paper

Guarantee! All work is written by expert writers!

Still stressed from student homework?

Get quality assistance from academic writers!

Order now