week 3 - learning to communicate Flashcards
At what age do children typically produce their first word?
around 12 months
when do children start combining 2-3 words?
around 24 months
What are examples of prelinguistic communication in infancy?
lots of evidence that early forms of prelinguistic communication in infancy are related to language performance in early childhood
- dyadic exchange of eye gaze
- vocalisations
- gestures or facial expressions
- showing and giving gestures
- triadic interactions (not just between infant and caregiver)
What is one of the most reliable findings regarding early language?
a strong correlation between social-communicative abilities (like pointing) and early language
At what age does pointing typically emerge in infants?
between 9-14 months
What are the key features of developing communication skills?
- turn taking
- ostension
- joint-attention and common ground
What foundational skill is central to human communication?
turn taking
what is proto-conversation?
the alternation of vocalization between carer and infant before language acquisition (Trevarthen, 1977)
-evidence for them in first weeks of life and continuing to develop along with development of communication and language abilities
How is turn-taking foudational to human communication?
- evidence from samples world wide (Dingemanse & Liesenfeld, 2022), including sign language
- seemingly simple, minimising overlap and gaps involved is a cognitive challenge that has implications for language structure
- infants show turn-taking behaviour well before they start using language proficiently
How is early turn-taking linked to later development?
it is associated with higher language proficiency and vocabulary size
How did Nguygen, Zimmer & Hoehl (2023) study caregiver-infant brain synchrony as a possible mechanism of early turn taking in 4-6 month old infants
- brain synchrony was associated with higher turn-taking frequency, but only at the start of the proto-conversation
- further evidence that early turn-taking is linked to later language development (vocab size)
- turn taking is seen in a number of primate communication systems (vocal and gestural)
- suggesting that (vocal) turn taking is ancestral in origin in the primate order
What is ostension?
making it clear that you are trying to communicate, such as through eye contact or infant-directed speech
What are some examples of ostensive behaviours in infant communication?
- several studies have shown that ostensive behaviours lead infants and children to interpret/infer actions as communicative (natural pedagogy, Senju & Csibra, 2008)
- 6 month old infants are more likely to follow an actor’s gaze to a target when it is preceded by gaze or speech cues (Senju & Csibra, 2008; Hernik & Broesch, 2018)
Explain the study on ostension affects on infant learning (Okumura et al., 2020)
Each video started with the baseline phase (A), followed by the attention-getting phase (B–E) and gazing phase (F). The attention-getting phase included eye contact (EC) or no eye contact (NEC) in experiment 1 and infant-directed speech (IDS) or adult-directed speech (ADS) in experiment 2. The baseline and the gazing phases were identical across conditions. The curves on (D) and (E) represent the pitch contour of the speech.
Can ostension infer communication?
- Kano et al. (2018) found that ostension increased attention overall, not to the target of communication
- it is difficult to define the behaviours that can be considered ostension
- children often interpret behaviour as communicative even when there are no ostensive cues
- for example, 6-month-olds follow gaze in non-ostensive contexts too (Gredeback et al., 2018)
- to reconcile these findings, we may interpret that ostensive cues are sufficient but not necessary to infer communication
What is joint attention?
When an infant and another person focus together on an object of shared interest
What are some behaviours that demonstrate joint attention? (Carpenter et al., 1998)
- perceiving objects together by seeing or hearing them simultaneously and looking back to the partner
- pointing to objects with the goal to share attention with them
- imitative learning by repeating another’s action in recognition of performing the same action
- turning to others as guides in novel or ambiguous situations (social referencing)
- playing your part in simple collaborative games such as giving and taking an object
How is joint attention linked to later abilities?
- the goal of joint attention seems to be to share something with another person (Levinson et al., 2004)
- this ability is associated with language ability at 2 years old
What is the concept of common ground in communication?
- closely related to joint attention
- common ground is knowledge or experience shared with another person
- the most straightforward way in which info can be grounded is through direct social interaction (such as joint attention)
At what age do infants adjust their pointing based on common ground? (Bohn et al., 2018)
found evidence that 12 month olds adjust their pointing in line with shared common ground
How did Thiele et al. (2023) use a violation of expectation paradigm and eye-tracking to investigate joint attention in 9-month-old infants?
- infants sat on caregivers lap, facing a table where objects were placed. an experimenter sat across from the infant
- baseline condition (expected gaze): the experimenter established eye contact with the infant, then turned their head and eyes to look at one of two objects on the table. infants were expected to follow the experimenters gaze to the correct object
- violation of expectation condition (unexpected gaze): the experimenter turned their head and eyes as if to look at an object on one side of the table, but verbally referred to or pointed toward an object on the opposite side. this mismatch created a violation of the infant’s expectations.
- eye-tracking recorded where the infants were looking throughout the trials monitoring: anticipatory gaze (if infants looked at the object before the agent did, indicating prediction), gaze duration (how long infants fixated on the experimenter or objects) and gaze shifts (whether infants followed the experimenters gaze correctly)
- a curtain closes, and when opened, the object will either have stayed in the same position, changed positions, or a new object will have replaced the first one
RESULTS
- infants looked longer at the identity change outcomes in the “eye contact” condition compared to the “no eye contact” condition. responses to location changes were not influenced by the presence of eye contact
- they found similar results when infants observed joint-attention (eye contact) as a third party
How did Myers et al. (2024) study joint attention without mutual eye-contact?
- during video chat, pointing and eye-contact do not work in the same way
- Myers et al studied video calls between infants and their grandparents during the pandemic
- they found that grandparents could facilitate joint visual attention in some contexts and that there were developmental changes in how joint attention was established
What is a unique aspect of human social cognition and communication, according to Tomasello (2022)?
the ability to ‘share’ experiences with others
What animal has shown pointing behaviour?
Great apes also point - though almost exclusively when interacting with humans - mainly to request items (imperative pointing)
How is common ground an important aspect of how we interpret communication?
- evidence that infants make inferences about communication in the light of common ground
- children then continue to develop the skills that allow them to determine how information comes to be part of common ground
- for example, reasoning about group-specific knowledge
- there is evidence that apes may be able to use some form of common ground when communicating with others (humans in this case)
