ASSESSING KNOWLEDGE CONVEYED IN GESTURE - DO TEACHERS HAVE THE UPPER HAND

Children's gestures can reveal important information about their probl em-solving strategies. This study investigated whether the information children express only in gesture is accessible to adults not trained in gesture coding. Twenty teachers and 20 undergraduates viewed videot aped vignettes of 12 children explaining their solutions to equations. Six children expressed the same strategy in speech and gesture, and 6 expressed different strategies. After each vignette, adults described the child's reasoning. For children who expressed different strategie s in speech and gesture, both teachers and undergraduates frequently d escribed strategies that children had not expressed in speech. These a dditional strategies could often be traced to the children's gestures. Sensitivity to gesture was comparable for teachers and undergraduates . Thus, even without training, adults glean information, not only from children's words but also from their hands.