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  3. Human language is the subject of endless scientific investigation, but the gestures that accompany speech are a surprisingly neg

Human language is the subject of endless scientific investigation, but the gestures that accompany speech are a surprisingly neg

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问题     Human language is the subject of endless scientific investigation, but the gestures that accompany speech are a surprisingly neglected area. It is sometimes jokingly said that the way to render an Italian speechless is to tie his wrists together, but almost everyone moves their hands in meaningful ways when they talk. Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, however, studies gestures carefully—and not out of idle curiosity. Introspection suggests that gesturing not only helps people communicate but also helps them to think. She set out to test this, and specifically to find out whether gestures might be used as an aid to children’s learning. It turns out, as she told the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that they can.
    The experiment she conducted involved balancing equations. Presented with an equation of the form 2+3+4=x+4, written on a blackboard, a child is asked to calculate the value of x. In the equations Dr Goldin-Meadow always made the last number on the left the same as the last on the right; so x was the sum of the first two numbers. Commonly, however, children who are learning arithmetic will add all three of the numbers on the left to arrive at the value of x.
    In her previous work Dr Goldin-Meadow had noted that children often use spontaneous gestures when explaining how they solve mathematical puzzles. So to see if these hand-movements actually help a child to think, or are merely descriptive, she divided a group of children into two and asked them to balance equations. One group was asked to gesture while doing so. A second was asked not to. Both groups were then given a lesson in how to solve problems of this sort.
    As Dr Goldin-Meadow suspected, the first group learnt more from the lesson than the second. By observing their gestures she refined the experiment. Often, a child would touch or point to the first two numbers on the left with the first two fingers of one hand. Dr Goldin-Meadow therefore taught this gesture explicitly to another group of children. Or, rather, she taught a third of them, taught another third to point to the second and third numbers this way, and told the remainder to use no gestures. When all were given the same lesson it was found those gesturing "correctly" learnt the most. But those gesturing "incorrectly" still outperformed the non-gesturers.
    Gesturing, therefore, clearly does help thought. Indeed, it is so thought-provoking that even the wrong gestures have some value. Perhaps this helps to explain why the arithmetic-intensive profession of banking was invented in Italy.
According to Paragraph 4, which of the following is true of the experiment?
选项 A、Children gesturing "correctly" told the remainder how to use gestures.
B、Wrong gestures as well as correct ones can aid children’s learning.
C、Correct gestures can help children to solve most mathematical problems.
D、Dr Goldin-Meadow changed the mathematical problems and children’s gestures.
答案B
解析 根据题干可直接定位到第四段。该段末句提到，无论手势正确与否，那些使用手势的儿童的学习效果要好于那些不使用手势的儿童，故B项与文意相符，为正确答案。第四段第四句提到戈尔丁.梅多博士将手势清楚教给学生，所以教授者不是A项中提到的“正确使用手势的学生”，A项错误。虽然从戈尔丁.梅多的实验中可看出，手势可帮助孩子解决数学问题，但C项说的能解决most mathematical problems“绝大多数数学问题”就属于过度推断了，故C项错误。戈尔丁.梅多博士只是改进了实验，D项中的changed the mathematical problems没有事实根据。
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