How Gesture Promotes

But there is now new evidence suggesting that gesture can do more than reflect thought—it can play a role in changing thought. First, gesture can contribute to knowledge change through its idea, whereas speech conveys meaning discretely, relying on cod-ified words and grammatical devices. Nonetheless, the informa-tion conveyed in gesture and in speech can overlap a great deal. explanation as the first child in speech, but a different incorrect ª 2009, Copyright the Author(s) Journal Compilationª 2009, Society for Research in Child Development CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVEScommunicative effects. If a child’s gestures reflect the state of Consider, for example, a child asked to explain why he put 12, an incorrect response, in the blank in the following math problem: 3 + 5 + 4 = _ _ + 4. The child says, ‘‘I added the 3, the 5, and the 4,’ ’ while pointing at the three numbers on the left side of the equal sign. The child is conveying overlapping information in gesture and speech and thus produces a gesture–speech match. There are, however, times when gesture and speech convey different information. Consider another child who also puts 12 in the blank and gives the same incorrect ‘‘add to equal sign’’ The research described in this article was supported by Grant R01 HD47450 from the NICHD. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed t