The generality of gesture-speech mismatch as an index of transitional knowledge: Evidence from a control-of-variables task☆

Abstract The purpose of the present study was to explore the proposed diagnostic role of gesture-speech mismatches as an index of transitional knowledge (Church & Golden-Meadow 1986; Perry, Church, & Goldin-Meadow 1988). A group of forty-three 15-year-olds was videotaped while working on a control-of-variables task. The prediction from the earlier work would be that those subjects with a transitional mastery of the isolation-of-variables strategy would show greater gesture-speech mismatch during explanations of their testing than would subjects with consolidated mastery, or subjects exhibiting no access to the strategy. Gestural and spoken references to potential causal variables were coded independently. Although individual differences were evident in several indices of the frequency of gesture-speech mismatches, there was no evidence of any relation between these measures and measures of the status of subjects' knowledge of the control-of-variables strategy. Possible explanations for the discrepancy between the present findings and those of past studies are discussed in terms of the differing conceptual domains tapped by the two tasks and in terms of the types of gestures elicited by the tasks.