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Children's Unspoken Language
By Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon
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Gesture can help children perform better on certain tasks. For example, 4-year-olds made fewer errors in counting when they were allowed to gesture than when this wasn't allowed (Saxe & Kaplan 1981). Younger children made errors regardless of whether they were allowed to gesture or not, suggesting that their gesturing behavior did not help their processing of the task. Older children performed without error regardless of accompanying gesturing behavior, presumably because the counting procedure was so well learned for them and therefore less demanding. These results suggest that 4-year-olds know how to count but that it is a demanding task. Performing gestures somehow decreases the "cognitive load" of counting. The same principles will apply for an age-appropriate task at any age.