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Thinking with your hands : the surprising science behind how gestures shape our thoughts / Susan Goldin-Meadow.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Basic Books, Hachette Book Group, 2023Copyright date: ©2023Edition: First editionDescription: vii, 263 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmISBN:
  • 9781541600805
  • 1541600800
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 153.6/9 23/eng/20230201
Contents:
Introduction: My journey into gesture -- Part I: Thinking with our hands. Why do we use our hands when we talk? -- Our hands reflect our minds -- Our hands can change our minds -- Part II: Speaking with our hands. As long a there are humans, there will be language -- Watching language grow naturally and in the lab -- Part III: Why you should care about hands. Using hands to parent -- Using hands to diagnose and treat -- Using hands to educate -- What if gesture were considered as important as language?
Summary: "Imagine a friend who earnestly tells you that he thinks men and women are equally good leaders. But when he talks about men's leadership skills, he places his palm at eye-level, and when he talks about women's leadership skills, he places his palm a bit lower, at mouth-level. His hands have given him away: even if he truly thinks that his views are egalitarian, he holds an implicit belief that is now there for all the word to see. You swear you heard him say something disparaging, even if you don't fully realize why. In Thinking With Your Hands, cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow reveals just how essential gestures are to how we think and communicate. Drawing on decades of research, including experiments and studies from throughout her own illustrious career, Goldin-Meadow presents the definitive overview of the most important feature of human communication that you've never thought about. Gesture is a universal behavior common to every culture and language. It's found among Deaf people who use their hands to speak in sign language and blind people who have never seen anyone gesture before. Far from being an affective flourish, Goldin-Meadow argues, gestures are an integral piece of the conversation-even if we don't realize it while we're using them. They give form to ideas that are difficult to phrase in language and help us express ideas that we are grappling with but haven't yet fully grasped. Indeed, understanding gesture compels us to re-think everything from to how we set development milestones for children, to what's admissible in a court of law, to whether FaceTime is a good communication technology. A landmark achievement by a star in the field of cognitive psychology, Thinking With Your Hands reveals the entire landscape of communication that's hidden in our hands and promises to transform the way we think about language for decades to come"--
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Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book *Middletown Public Library NON-FICTION 153.69 GOL Available 33581009070186
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An astounding account of how gesture, long overlooked, is essential to how we learn and interact, which "changes the way you think about yourself and the people around you." (Ethan Kross, bestselling author of Chatter )



We all know people who talk with their hands--but do they know what they're saying with them? Our gestures can reveal and contradict us, and express thoughts we may not even know we're thinking.

In Thinking with Your Hands , esteemed cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow argues that gesture is vital to how we think, learn, and communicate. She shows us, for instance, how the height of our gestures can reveal unconscious bias, or how the shape of a student's gestures can track their mastery of a new concept--even when they're still giving wrong answers. She compels us to rethink everything from how we set child development milestones, to what's admissible in a court of law, to whether Zoom is an adequate substitute for in-person conversation. 

Sweeping and ambitious, Thinking with Your Hands promises to transform the way we think about language and communication.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 218-253) and index.

Introduction: My journey into gesture -- Part I: Thinking with our hands. Why do we use our hands when we talk? -- Our hands reflect our minds -- Our hands can change our minds -- Part II: Speaking with our hands. As long a there are humans, there will be language -- Watching language grow naturally and in the lab -- Part III: Why you should care about hands. Using hands to parent -- Using hands to diagnose and treat -- Using hands to educate -- What if gesture were considered as important as language?

"Imagine a friend who earnestly tells you that he thinks men and women are equally good leaders. But when he talks about men's leadership skills, he places his palm at eye-level, and when he talks about women's leadership skills, he places his palm a bit lower, at mouth-level. His hands have given him away: even if he truly thinks that his views are egalitarian, he holds an implicit belief that is now there for all the word to see. You swear you heard him say something disparaging, even if you don't fully realize why. In Thinking With Your Hands, cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow reveals just how essential gestures are to how we think and communicate. Drawing on decades of research, including experiments and studies from throughout her own illustrious career, Goldin-Meadow presents the definitive overview of the most important feature of human communication that you've never thought about. Gesture is a universal behavior common to every culture and language. It's found among Deaf people who use their hands to speak in sign language and blind people who have never seen anyone gesture before. Far from being an affective flourish, Goldin-Meadow argues, gestures are an integral piece of the conversation-even if we don't realize it while we're using them. They give form to ideas that are difficult to phrase in language and help us express ideas that we are grappling with but haven't yet fully grasped. Indeed, understanding gesture compels us to re-think everything from to how we set development milestones for children, to what's admissible in a court of law, to whether FaceTime is a good communication technology. A landmark achievement by a star in the field of cognitive psychology, Thinking With Your Hands reveals the entire landscape of communication that's hidden in our hands and promises to transform the way we think about language for decades to come"--

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Introduction: My Journey into Gesture (1)
  • Part I Thinking with Our Hands
  • Chapter 1 Why Do We Use Our Hands When We Talk? (23)
  • Chapter 2 Our Hands Reflect Our Minds (51)
  • Chapter 3 Our Hands Can Change Our Minds (73)
  • Part II Speaking with Our Hands
  • Chapter 4 As Long as There Are Humans, There Will Be Language (97)
  • Chapter 5 Watching Language Grow Naturally and in the Lab (127)
  • Part III Why You Should Care about Hands
  • Chapter 6 Using Hands to Parent (149)
  • Chapter 7 Using Hands to Diagnose and Treat (171)
  • Chapter 8 Using Hands to Educate (185)
  • Chapter 9 What If Gesture Were Considered as Important as Language? (201)
  • Acknowledgments (213)
  • Notes (219)
  • Index (255)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In this thought-provoking book, leading gesture expert Goldin-Meadow (psychology, Univ. of Chicago; Hearing Gesture), a former president of the International Society for Gesture Studies, explains that people's hand movements when they speak often express hidden thoughts and unspoken details. The book takes an in-depth look at homesigns, invented gestures used by Deaf children to communicate when they either do not know the ASL gesture for the word or when they are communicating with others who do not know sign language. One particularly interesting chapter discusses how hand gestures can be used to unconsciously express thoughts, change minds, and also influence others' responses. The author asserts that hand gestures can affect the pace of learning and improve abstract reasoning and education. The book also indicates that restricting hand gestures can affect thinking processes. The book's three-part chapter groupings (with notes and index) provide logical, convincing arguments and a fascinating look into communicating with gestures. VERDICT Highly recommended for those interested in communication, nonverbal language, and kinesics.--Bridgette Whitt

Publishers Weekly Review

"To fully communicate with others, and maybe even with ourselves, we need to understand what's happening with our hands," asserts Goldin-Meadow (Hearing Gesture), a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, in this comprehensive offering. Goldin-Meadow suggests that people gesture partly because language is imperfect and better at capturing some details than others, and because gesturing provides a "different modality" through which to learn or work through a problem. In addition to aiding communication, the author writes, gestures can reveal internal bias and has been shown to improve memory (researchers found that adults who gestured while describing videos of people performing "sometimes odd actions" had a stronger recollection of them several weeks later than the nongesturers). Drawing on her own studies, Goldin-Meadow explores the practical applications of better understanding gesture, such as helping parents track their children's cognitive development; explores how gesture can reveal conversational subtext; and examines how public figures gesture both subconsciously and intentionally, such as the way National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman used choreographed gestures to bring alive her 2020 poem, "The Hill We Climb." Though the author tends to pile on the research a bit too thickly for the nonspecialist, readers will be captivated by the nuance and depth of her analysis, which excavates a topic that's universally relevant yet little understood by most. This fascinates. (June)Correction: An earlier version of this review listed an incorrect title for the book.

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