Language and Communication Flashcards
language vs. communication
language: a system of symbols
- Combines meaningless elements into structures that convey meaning
○ They’re meaningless things that we combine into a word, words carry meanings, we combine those into bigger structure of sentences, sentences have rules about how we can combine individually meaningless parts
phonemes
- the sounds of language
- Meaning behind one is language contingent
§ Ex: in english, “luh” and “ruh” are different, but are virtually the same for japanese speakers
morphemes
smallest units of meaning in language
- a building block
○ Adding “-s” or “-ing” to the end of a world
semantics
meaning
- what a “rake” would refer to
syntax
rules for combining words into meaningful and interpretable sequences
- rules for how we combine words; we can’t just put them in any order and assume they make sense
○ “I see the rake” vs “rake the I see”
○ Different languages have different syntaxes i.e. sentence structure
pragmatics
the rules for how language is used
○ Tone for which how we use language
○ How we may change our language based on who we speak to
language acquisition: nature?
Innate human characteristic - children everywhere acquire language; first days of life they respond the most to language
bees: communication
waggle dance
- you can’t combine them into a plethora of things
dogs understanding language
Des they have syntax? Do they have the ability to combine things to create endless possibilities?
Kanzi (bonobo)
learned a language from when his mother was being taught the language
- Learned over 400 words
- Has some understanding of syntax; is this evidence of language in a non human species?
○ But it stops at this; there’s a “limit” of how much the bonobo can understand whereas children surpass this immensely and continue to grow
language acquisition: nurture?
- requires experience & exposure
- importance of timing –> sensitive critical period?
Clearly, we’re not tuned to language in general, we’re tuned by the language we’re exposed to
- You need exposure to acquire language
language acquisition: timing
- A sensitive or critical period
○ Do you need to get that exposure to language before that age/within a certain time frame
forbidden box study (language)
methodology, to measure this, you’d ideally put a baby in a box and don’t expose them to language
- VERY UNETHICAL
language acquisition: Genie case study
- Father put her downstairs until she was 7 until she was found
○ She was punished when she tried to make noises - Researchers took her as a case study: will she still be able to acquire language at age 7 if she wasn’t exposed to it before then
○ She was able to learn words but struggled with syntax
○ Lots of questions about the generalizability - Does this give us evidence that language needs to be learned earlier in life
language acquisition: adoption studies
- Born into one language environment + adopted into another language environment
- Findings: exposure earlier in life makes it a lot easier to acquire that syntax
–> after 3-7, have a harder time learning the language they’re immersed into
linguistic competence
your ability to produce and understand linguistically accurate things/well formed meaningful sentences
- Do you have vocabulary?
- Do you know how to form sentences?
linguistic competence: 10-12 months
infants discriminate and produce the sounds of their language(s)
- often producing their first words
linguistic competence: 2 years
vocabulary of 200-500 words
- learning something around 3 new words a day
linguistic competence: 18 months
begin combining words
linguistic competence: variability
Many differences/variability within children and linguistic competence; using morphemes, vocabulary, etc.
communicative competence
the ability to use language to communicate with others; to share your messages and understand other peoples messages
- what continues to shift throughout childhood
egocentric speech
speech not oriented towards others; reflection of children’s egocentric thinking
- Piaget noticed that children were talking to themselves or to other people, but used language in a way that wasn’t really used to communicate with other people
- Not really understanding what others are saying/how to communicate with them
○ Reflection of children not being able to go outside of their perspective
monologue
running dialogue to yourself; using a language but not communicating to another person
collective monologue
when 2+ children are speaking together in what looks like a convo, but not for the purpose of each other
- “no desire to influence his hearer or to tell him anything”
egocentric speech transitions to…
social speech
Private Speech: Piaget or Vygotsky?
Vygotsky
Egocentric Speech: Piaget or Vygotsky?
Piaget
Egocentric speech: how it works
isn’t mechanism for thought (not making you better at thinking) but rather a reflection/evidence of the egocentric thought
- As they develop and start to understand others perspectives, they shift from egocentric –> eccentric speech
- Now taking other perspectives into account
private speech
repeat what they hear adults say to digest it OR to help them with difficult tasks; good for thinking
- Helps to regulate and plan
- Drive thinking
- used more in difficult tasks; move you to understand things
private speech: how it works
1: learning speech from others
2: private speech: talking out loud to yourself to work though it
3: inner speech: internalize it - you have an inner monologue
research on language: piaget or vygotsky?
vygotsky’s inner speech
- Talking thru things out loud seems to drive thinking; not just a driver of it, but a mechanism that helps thought
turn taking
- Shows up early in development
○ Babbling: some kind of turn taking
You vocalize, the baby responds, etc.
taking related turns
You respond on the same thing as the person you’re talking to
- Poor in early childhood, but steadily improve
- @7 - 60% are on the same topic
- @ grade 5 - most conversations are on the same topic
repairing miscommunication
something is said but the listener does not understand; for a good convo, you need to get to that understanding thru active repair
repairing miscommunication: young children
1-3 y/o
initially tend to repeat failed communication
- Sometimes louder and louder
repairing miscommunication: older ages
3-5 y/o
more likely to repair failed communication
○ If someone doesn’t understand you, you change it up/ask something in a different way
repairing miscommunication: throughout development
increase in giving/responding to verbal and non-verbal feedback
- Increase thru childhood into adolescence
language adaptation
we adapt our language when speaking to different individuals and when in different situations
- Who we talk to (friends, parents, peers, etc.)
- Pitch, vocabulary, tone, etc. may change
language adaptation: earliest onset
as young as 4
- children will adjust their language to younger vs. older children; children vs. adults
registers
styles of language associated w/ particular setting/roles
- even young children seem to adapt their registers while playing
- Ex: when Lily is teaching, she uses a more formal register vs. when she’s talking to her friends
- Even done in young children
- If they’re pretending to be a teacher or mom, we see the register of speech switch
dialect
forms of language that vary with region or groups of people
- different structures, words, pronunciations, etc.
- All within the same language, but has a different form to it
- All dialects are good and accurate forms of a language
ex: Canadian English, Australian English, etc.
African American (AAE)/Black English
- characteristic forms and rules, distinct vocabulary
○ Has characteristics swaps of constantans
Characteristics in syntax (i.e. to be being used differently, like “he done gone to the store”) - young children show ability to code-switch, and adjust dialect for the context
AAE: children and schooling
- use by black children appears to decrease once beginning formal schooling; this is correlated w/ academic success
○ Kids who decline their use of black English tend to do so only at schools; they get better at code switching = correlated with success
language: form, content, and use
form: phonemes, syntax, morphemes
content: semantics
use: pragmatics
bilingualism: rates
> 50% of the world’s population
~20% of Canadians
types of bilingualism
- simultaneous/crib
- sequential
simultaneous/crib bilinguals
learning 2 languages since birth
sequential bilinguals
learn 1 language, then a 2nd
bilingualism: challenges in language development
one has to learn two different:
- forms
- sets of content/meanings/vocab
- sets of rules for use
○ have to get the right sounds and grammar, but also know how to appropriately use language with other people/conversation
○ the ways that we use language might be different for rules of use
code switching/code mixing
2-4 years
- bilingual children appear to appropriately apply languages based on their conversational partner
- first step of bilingual communication
code-switching: concerns
parents often worry about children mixing up the two languages
conversations (bilingual communication)
some evidence that bilingual children are better able to detect conversational violations
- Maybe attending to two separate rules can create an advantage
- Potentially be able to better at detecting violations of conversations
bilingual communication: advantage in younger children
able to detect violations in communication
○ Detecting if someone was being rude, talking too much, etc.
bilingualism: early study on IQ
1920s-1950s: studies presented bilingual individuals as scoring lower on IQ/cognitive assessments
bilingualism: early study on IQ - problems
○ Mainly conducted in the US; tests conducted in English
§ Difficulty w/ recent immigrants or recent speakers
○ Confounded w/ socioeconomics
§ Recent immigrant groups vs. those who’d been in the US for a while
We still see the remnants:
○ Many believe raising a kid bilingual will be damaging for their cognition
bilingualism: later, hallmark study on IQ
1961
- more evenly matched bilingual & monolingual samples
- found that bilingual children were greater in cognitive abilities; seen to do better on tests
- led to many studies looking at bilingualism and mental flexibility
bilingualism: cognitive advantages
- perspective taking
- executive function
perspective taking - Director’s Task experiment setup (bilingualism)
- Sit child or adult in front of the diagram; toys in boxes, etc.
a. Some squares are blocked off on the back
b. Director who’s sitting in back has some items blocked of from pov - Director asks, “can you give me the small, red car”
a. From participants pov: the smallest red car is different from the smallest red car that the director’s smallest red car
b. Do they take the director’s perspective?
c. How long does it take them?
d. Where do they look in this task
perspective taking - Director’s Task experiment finding (bilingualism)
bilingual are better than monolingual
BUT: those who grow up in communities where there’s a large amount of exposure to another language
- Suggests that the bilingual advantages in perspective taking, you don’t need to be fluent, but just being exposed in your community can convey some of those advantages
perspective taking - Director’s Task experiment conclusion (bilingualism)
You’re often having to take other people’s perspectives into account
- May be more experience of taking other perspectives and mental states into account
executive function (bilingualism)
ability to plan ahead; manage cog abilities; inhibit reactions; use executive control to govern behavior
executive function: card sorting task (bilingualism)
- Starting with sorting things by color, and then switching to sorting things by shape
ex: first sort pictures by color (a flower or truck), but then change the rules to sort by shape (disregard color of the shape) - Are you able to use a new rule to govern behavior?
executive function: card sorting finding (bilingualism)
Bilingual children: better at Card Sorting task
Monolingual: less likely to get the new rule correct
executive function: card sorting conclusion (bilingualism)
growing up bilingual, you’re constantly needing to switch up and alternate between different rules
- You’re getting practice on task switching
- Carries into general cognitive abilities of cognition and task switching
bilingualism: advantage or not?
They don’t have an advantage for everything
- No disadvantages for IQ; doesn’t matter for overall intelligence, but rather specific cognitive rules
- extend of advantages is still debated
types of langauge
spoken and signed
sign language: general facts
- 100-300 signed languages
- Each has their own set of words, rules, and structure
- share same properties of language
- rules of form
- rules of use
- different registers and dialects
signed languages: structure
- Also have phonemes
○ Finger shape
○ Where you place things (i.e. on the face, how far you extend your arm - Syntax - rules for how you can combine things together
○ You can have incorrect signs - Pragmatics/rules for use
○ Have different registers
○ Different dialects
black ASL
Tends to use two hands for ASL
signed language: patterns of acquisition
children exposed to signed language have similar patterns of acquisition to spoken language
gestures
- pointing (first in development @10 months)
- Symbolic or representational gestures
○ Thumbs up = its all good
○ Shaka near head = phone - Pantomime
○ Acting out something gestures - Beat gesture
○ Accompany speech
○ Gesture on beat to create emphases
gesture reflects thought
a “window into what children know”
- # of gestures indicates vocabulary acquisition
gesture-speech mismatches
we might say something verbally with our words, but give a different thing with our words
gesture-speech mismatches: what it means
- reflect verge of learning: children who produce mismatches benefit most from instruction on that task
- They’re starting to understand
○ With their hands: starting to express different ideas
○ words might be wrong but their motions are more similar to what’s correct –> might be showing that they’re on the verge of understanding
gesture: considered language?
NO!
it lacks the formal feature
- No individual components that you can meaningfully combine to make communication
- Not set rules and structure
More broad, abstract system of communication than language
mathematical equivalence
one of the most common and challenging errors in early math learning
we want to make both sides equivalent
- Tends to be really hard for kids, even into later elementary school
- Predicts their later math performance
○ Likelihood of high school math grades
○ Likelihood of failing math
- Foundational math
- Likelihood of dropping out of high school
mathematical equivalence: looking @ gesture
Looking at how kids explain what they’re doing and the gestures they produce
- When they get it wrong, they ask what they did to do their work
- Sometimes: their work will be wrong but their words and gestures will match
- Sometimes: their work will be wrong but their words and gestures do NOT match
○ In their hands, they seem to be acknowledging something on the right side of the equation, but don’t acknowledge it in their words
mathematical equivalence: looking @ gesture findings
- children who gesture match have LOWER success post-training
- children who gesture mismatch have HIGHER success post training
Idea: what we’re doing with our hands might reflect that we’re starting to learn
gestures: changing thought
can help to “lighten the load” in difficult tasks
- when children gesture during learning, they remember more
gesture limiting: experiment w/ adults
the adults who are allowed to use their hands when working through problems learn more than those who are forced to sit on their hands
gesture vs. thought on learning experiment - conditions
3 conditions: taught children how to do mathematical equivalence with different techniques:
Physical action: Teach them to either use physical action (physical numbers; instructed to pick them up and move them)
Concrete: pantomime; gesturing as if you’re picking them up, but not actually moving them
Abstract: abstract representation of lumping things together, moving them around, etc.
gesture vs. thought on learning experiment - findings
All conditions were good for learning
- with the type of they child is trained with, they’re all beneficial
Once we get into problems where the action is the same but the problem is different (i.e. generalization), only those who had abstract training are able to succeed
examined generalizability (gesturing to learn mathematical equivalence)
how well a child is able to apply learnings to different equation
- You need to have a deeper, abstract understanding of equivalence
abstract gesture can represent/apply to a broader set of things
- More deeper, abstract principle
- Can apply it to newer things
