Gesture-sign mismatches made while explaining a math problem suggest a
deaf child is experiencing a teachable moment, a finding that could help
their instructors become better teachers. Through a series of experiments with 40 deaf children, ages nine through
12, all of whom were fluent in American Sign Language, researchers were
able to distinguish between ASL signs and gestures that look like the
gestures hearing children produce when explaining the same math
problems. In previous work, it has been shown that gesture-speech mismatch is a clue to teachable moments in hearing children. This is a great read and a very interesting article for teachers of the deaf that in particular focus on ASL.