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An astounding account of how gesture, long overlooked, is essential to how we learn and interact, which “changes the way you think about yourself and the people around you.” (Ethan Kross, bestselling author of Chatter) We all know people who talk with their hands—but do they know what they're saying with them? Our gestures can reveal and contradict us, and express thoughts we may not even know we're thinking. In Thinking with Your Hands, esteemed cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow argues that gesture is vital to how we think, learn, and communicate. She shows us, for instance, how the height of our gestures can reveal unconscious bias, or how the shape of a student's gestures can track their mastery of a new concept—even when they're still giving wrong answers. She compels us to rethink everything from how we set child development milestones, to what's admissible in a court of law, to whether Zoom is an adequate substitute for in-person conversation. Sweeping and ambitious, Thinking with Your Hands promises to transform the way we think about language and communication.

This concise guide introduces the importance of executive function for social and emotional well-being and effective learning. It clearly explains the research that underpins important topics such as working memory, organization, self-regulation, attention and cognitive flexibility, and how they apply to the real-world settings in which we work with children, adolescents, and families. This engaging book offers knowledge and strategies for improving executive function together with an understanding of its relevance for diverse populations.The authors use the most current research to provide an overview of what executive function is, how it develops, and how it works in coordination with other developmental factors to promote regulation and flexibility in thinking. Chapters contain detailed information about the biological and physiological foundations for brain development and emotion regulation, as well as advances in cognition, emotion, and social relationships. Making the research accessible to all with evidence-based writing and theory-to-practice applications, the book provides applications with career contexts and interviews and case studies that bring the book to life.Designed to introduce professionals, advocates, and parents to the importance of executive function in human development, this book is for all those working with children and young people. It will also be of interest as an introductory text for those new to the field or as a way to learn to apply developmental principles in practice.

The Learning Sciences in Conversation explores the unique pluralities, complex networks, and distinct approaches of the learning scientists of today. Focused on four key scholarly areas – transdisciplinarity, design, cognition, and technology – this cutting-edge volume draws on empirical and theoretical foundations to illustrate the directions, perspectives, methods, and questions that continue to define this evolving field. Contributions by researchers are put in dialogue with one another, offering an exemplary analysis of a field that synthesizes, in situ, various scholarly traditions and orientations to create a critical and heterogenous understanding of learning.

Cognitive flexibility is the cornerstone of learning and enables us to cope with a constantly changing environment. By adapting our knowledge and habits in order to respond to new situations, cognitive flexibility plays a fundamental role in learning.This book proposes a study of the fundamental notions of cognitive flexibility: its measurement and development, its links with metacognition and critical thinking and the role of context in its expression, as well as its involvement in discovering solutions, transferring knowledge and processing analogies.Convergent perspectives are also presented in order to paint a clear picture of cognitive flexibility and to discuss the issues at stake. Thanks to the combined views of specialists in cognitive and developmental psychology, Cognitive Flexibility suggests new educational possibilities based on the results of empirical work on the subject.

Toward a Holistic Intelligence: Life on the Other Side of the Digital Barrier is a critical examination of how the Internet, our current digital age, and people's continuous use of digital devices is adversely affecting their thought processes, working memories, attention spans, and overall level of intelligence. In doing so, it explores how a larger intelligence based primarily on direct insight and creative absorption, qualities which are integrally part of people's emotive and sensorial lives, might allow for a clearer exploration of their world and themselves at a time in which our cognitive lives are being so thoroughly abrogated by the Internet and its resultant technologies.