{"id":71117,"date":"2017-05-30T14:27:44","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T12:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/?p=71117\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:22:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:22:47","slug":"goede-ideeen-komen-tot-stand-door-vriendschap-en-een-biertje-foto-van-boek-invoegen-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2017\/05\/30\/goede-ideeen-komen-tot-stand-door-vriendschap-en-een-biertje-foto-van-boek-invoegen-2\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Good ideas come from friendship and a beer\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wim Pouw did his PhD in social sciences on how hand gestures affect thought processes. This summer he is off to the University of Connecticut on a Rubicon scholarship.<\/p>\n

So you\u2019re next to an uncle\nat a family gathering.\nHow do you explain your\nresearch?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI studied how thinking is affected by actions in learning processes, so how thoughts originate from actions like hand gestures. A general idea is that hand gestures are communicative, but they are much more than that. A nice exotic example is the abacus, a Japanese version of a counting frame. Children or students use it to do complex sums. At a certain point, they are able to do these calculations without the abacus, but they still make the corresponding hand gestures. People who never learned to count on an abacus have much more difficulty with the sums. They probably have a linguistic strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

How will the world benefit from\nyour thesis?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI think my thesis contributes to knowledge about how thoughts are affected by actions, which is difficult to express in cognitive sciences. In Psychology, thought processes are usually studied in isolated situations, with no interaction with the environment. If you measure your brain activity in an MRI scanner, for example, movement is difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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\n\t\t\u2018I think that\u2019s why writing a book feels much more like getting a PhD\u2019\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

Of the people mentioned in your\nacknowledgement, who had you\nnot expected to be so important?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes the acknowledgement in a thesis so special is that it lists everyone you\u2019ve met during your research and how important they\u2019ve been in that process. Take the friendships that resulted. I did a lot of research with another PhD student who started at the same time as me. We regularly enjoyed a beer together. Many good ideas came from that friendship and that beer. That\u2019s something I wouldn\u2019t have wanted to miss.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was the first thing you did\nwhen you completed it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNothing special. I was applying for a Rubicon scholarship at the time. My thesis doesn\u2019t have great symbolic value for me. It\u2019s mainly a collection of articles that were already finished. I think that\u2019s why writing a book feels much more like getting a PhD.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are you going to do now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI really want to do more research. On 1 August I\u2019m off to the University of Connecticut to do my Rubicon research. Until then I\u2019ve got some projects to finish. And pass my driving test. In that small campus town in the woods you really can\u2019t do without a car. That will take some getting used to, because I\u2019m living in Amsterdam now.\u201d<\/p>\n\t

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About the cover <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted something abstract. Research theses into hand gestures always have hands on the cover and they aren\u2019t always pretty. Here you can see the suggestion of hands. The idea is that it also suggests the mind and all the components that belong to it, like the body.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t

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De redactie<\/h2>\n\t\t\n\t\t
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