Text 1: Cognitive scientist Park argues that gestures play a real causal role in thinking, not just communication. Studies show that children who gesture while solving problems learn faster, and adults asked to suppress gestures perform worse on spatial tasks. Gesturing, Park concludes, is part of how thought is produced.
Text 2: Cognitive scientist Singh accepts the correlations but proposes a different reading. Gestures, she argues, may not produce thought so much as externalize it: when reasoning becomes difficult, people who gesture simply have an extra channel for organizing thinking they are already doing. Suppressing gestures hurts performance because it removes a useful aid, not because gesture is itself constitutive of thought.
Based on the texts, how would Singh (Text 2) most likely respond to Park's claim?
- A
She would argue that gestures have no effect when suppressed.
- B
She would deny that gestures correlate with cognitive performance.
- C
She would propose that thought is impossible without gestures.
- Dcheck_circle
She would accept the correlations while reinterpreting their causal direction.
Explanation
Singh accepts the correlations but reframes the causal interpretation. B captures this. A and C contradict her; D overstates Park's view.