A research proposal

Children always gesture while explaining what they have to answer, narrate or describe. Almost all the studies, which have been made on children gesture, concluded saying gesture is a vehicle through which children express their knowledge.

When children are asked explain a concept they are acquiring, they will always gesture discordant, which means conveying one message in speech and another in gesture. These children are shown to be in a transitional state in the sense that they are particularly receptive to instruction- in fact, more receptive to instructions than the children who convey the same procedure in speech and gesture (1993).

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Although it is important to be able to describe the learner’s state before and after the task has been mastered, characterizing the process that bridges these two states is the key to understanding learning. Unfortunately, in many studies of learning in both adults and children, performance, procedures, and mental representation are described before and after learning.

While little attention is paid to the transition between these states (1989). One potential source of information about unverbalized mental processes is the spontaneous gestures that accompany speech.

Studies have also shown that child’s gestures can be used to predict child’s performance on a learning task. When a child produces gesture – speech mismatch on a given problem, that child by definition conveys deferent information in gesture and speech.

Surprisingly the information child expresses in gesture in such mistakes is typically not ever conveyed in speech during that assessment period, even across a series of test problems(1995). This finding suggested that the child who produces mismatches posses at least some knowledge that he or she cannot verbalize but can only express it in gesture, that is, knowledge that is uniquely expressed in gesture.

The studies concluded this assumption saying this concept necessarily rest on the assumption that the child’s gestures are an accurate reflection of what the child knows (1998). If the gestures are the accurate expression what the child knows the gestures will have a great deal to do with the source of the knowledge the children have. Studies have not discussed much about the source of knowledge child has really influencing the gestures the child make.

Indeed, all of the gesture - speech mismatch studies reported have been based on the assumption that gesture is a vehicle through which children can express meaning. And the fact that these studies have yielded coherent results provides indirect evidence for this assumption (1998).

The studies also undoubtedly state that gesture has the potential to offer a unique source of insight into the mind of a child. This proposed study is to seek empirical evidence to make sure that the source of knowledge a child has would always have an influence on the gestures the child make while expressing that knowledge. It is because, one must assume that if gesture is the vehicle through which children can express meaning, gesture is the vehicle through which adults can transport knowledge to the children for comprehension.

The speech – gesture mismatch children would make in the expression can be caused from the variations the child observes in the adults expressions. These variations in the adults gestures also cause the difference in the duration of this transition period. Children pay attention to information conveyed in gesture, the y learn from it. Children instructed in mathematics equivalent problems (e.g., 3 + 4 + 5 = _ + 5) are more likely to learn when the instruction includes speech and gesture than it includes only speech (2005).

This experience beyond doubt proves that children pay attention to the gestures the see and grasp information from them. Gestures have an indexical function. This indexical function of the gestures is what particularly enabling the children to benefit from the gestures and comprehend more. There can be deference in this indexical actions in gestures of different people in deferent cultures and different climatically and social conditions. Gesture thus serves the purpose of visual in a learning process.

This study here experiment that Conditions under which indexical gestures convey lessons to the children by the adults has anything to do with the speech – gesture mismatch children produce in their expressions.  Participating in an interactive section the enhancement of comprehension is vital. Enhancing the comprehension will mean the duration of above said transition will be reduced. Helping children to be effective communicators.

It will definitely be possible when the studies on the obvious reasons for the speech – gesture mismatch are dealt with. In order to make this study work the experiment should include narrations and description of intangible object with gestures.

And concrete things and theories also can be framed to experimental questions. All three of this categories in two sets, one with gestures seek comprehension and answers from children of two age groups,  while other seek comprehension and answers from children of two age groups of the same participants, without gestures.

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