Language, gesture, and judgment: Children's paths to abstract geometry.

Highlights • Children may reach explicit geometric knowledge through distinct developmental paths. • This development would depend on the geometrical properties involved. • Children can make correct geometric choices even when they cannot provide their reasoning explicitly. • Children can gesture co...

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Publicado en:Journal of Experimental Child Psychology Vol. 177; pp. 70 - 86
Autores principales: Calero, Cecilia I., Shalom, Diego E., Spelke, Elizabeth S., Sigman, Mariano
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Academic Press Inc. Jan2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Jan2019
      vid: 177
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      pub: Academic Press Inc.
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        132149415
        10.1016/j.jecp.2018.07.015
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        atl: Language, gesture, and judgment: Children's paths to abstract geometry.
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          Calero, Cecilia I.
          Shalom, Diego E.
          Spelke, Elizabeth S.
          Sigman, Mariano
        affil: Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina
      su:
        Psycholinguistics
        Judgment (Psychology)
        Child psychology
        Gesture
        Developmental psychology
        Psychology
        Explicit memory
      sug:
        subj:
          Psycholinguistics
          Judgment (Psychology)
          Child psychology
          Gesture
          Developmental psychology
          Psychology
          Explicit memory
      keyword:
        Explicit knowledge
        Geometrical reasoning
        Gestures
        Implicit knowledge
        Language
        Thought
        Explicit knowledge
        Geometrical reasoning
        Gestures
        Implicit knowledge
        Language
        Thought
      ab: Highlights • Children may reach explicit geometric knowledge through distinct developmental paths. • This development would depend on the geometrical properties involved. • Children can make correct geometric choices even when they cannot provide their reasoning explicitly. • Children can gesture correct geometric reasoning, even when their choices and speech do not. Abstract As infants, children are sensitive to geometry when recognizing objects or navigating through rooms; however, explicit knowledge of geometry develops slowly and may be unstable even in adults. How can geometric concepts be both so accessible and so elusive? To examine how implicit and explicit geometric concepts develop, the current study assessed, in 132 children (3–8 years old) while they played a simple geometric judgment task, three distinctive channels: children's choices during the game as well as the language and gestures they used to justify and accompany their choices. Results showed that, for certain geometric properties, children chose the correct card even if they could not express with words (or gestures) why they had made this choice. Furthermore, other geometric concepts were expressed and supported by gestures prior to their articulation in either choices or speech. These findings reveal that gestures and behavioral choices may reflect implicit knowledge and serve as a foundation for the development of geometric reasoning. Altogether, our results suggest that language alone might not be enough for expressing and organizing geometric concepts and that children pursue multiple paths to overcome its limitations, a finding with potential implications for primary education in mathematics.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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