Geologic gestures: A new classification for embodied cognition in geology

Abstract

Gestures are physical manifestations of cognitive processes. Geology students often use gestures to describe geologic features and processes. The gestures allow students to convey 3- and 4-dimensional information about the rocks. Studying and characterizing these gestures can be useful in understanding students’ learning processes; however, previous attempts to categorize gestures used in geologic contexts by existing classification schemes have been unsuccessful. The most commonly used schemes developed by cognitive science researchers are too simplistic to capture the full range of gestures used by students and professional geologists. Therefore, we have developed a new classification scheme to categorize the most common gestures we see being used in a geologic context. This classification scheme describes both the gesture type—the shape the hands make—and the gesture function—the meaning or purpose of the gesture. We used a hermeneutical approach to interpret gesture meaning, drawing from concurrent speech and contextual surroundings when the gestures were made. We categorized 5 gesture types: point, domain, flat-hand, frame, and form gestures. We categorized 11 gesture functions: tracing, highlighting, locational, directional, rotational, constraining, sizing, emphasis, sequential, illustrative, and constructive gestures. We subdivided gesture functions into first-order and second-order gesture functions, depending on their complexity. Through this classification scheme, we are able to categorize and describe the vast majority of gestures used in a geologic context. If we want to better understand how, when, and why geology students use gestures, and how those gestures communicate their conceptual understanding of geologic features and processes, we need a consistent vocabulary to describe it. This lexicon provides a necessary tool for future work in studying embodied cognition within a geologic context and for assessing students’ understanding of geologic concepts.