THE NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF GESTURES IN VISUALIZING, CONCEPTUALIZING, AND COMMUNICATING GEOLOGY
Abstract
Gestures are a physical manifestation of cognitive processes that reflect abstract and concrete ideas, and spatial and temporal relationships. Geology students use gestures while working through geologic problems in field and non-field setting, both to identify and describe geologic features, and to interpret geologic processes, and to construct working conceptual models of geologic concepts. In this dissertation, we develop a new, robust classification scheme for identifying and describing purposeful gestures used by geology students. The classification scheme identifies five gesture types (the shape that the hand makes) and eleven gesture functions (the purpose the gesture serves). Gesture functions subcategorized into first-order and second-order gesture functions. First-order gestures are simplistic in nature, conveying a singular piece of information, while second-order gestures are more complex, and may consist of multiple first-order gestures in combination or succession. This classification scheme is more descriptive and nuanced than previous gesture classifications developed by cognitive science. The classification scheme developed here captures the vast majority of meaningful gestures used by the participants. The gestures, once classified, exhibit several patterns of use. Students may use gestures in connection with verbal communication to emphasize, or bolster, their ideas, or they may use gestures as a substitute, or bridge, when vocabulary does not follow speech. When students are in a field setting, they are far more likely to use first-order gestures than second order gestures. When they are in non-field settings, the opposite is true. Students carry elements of their environment with them through embodied cognition, which reveals itself in both field and non-field settings. In both settings, students use gestures to display their mental models of geologic concepts. These are all facets of geocognition and spatial visualization that take on a physical expression of thought. We conclude by comparing styles of visualization as defined by cognitive sciences, to what geology experts believe are congruent applications. We test geology students’ visualization skills through cognitive instruments and track their performance through a 4-year undergraduate program. We do not see the expected shift in visualization skills, however we do see visualization skills manifest through gestures, regardless of the instrument scores.
Citation
Van Boening, Angela Marie (2021). THE NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF GESTURES IN VISUALIZING, CONCEPTUALIZING, AND COMMUNICATING GEOLOGY. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /195740.