Chapter 3 Connecting Language Acquisition and Language Evolution Clues from the Emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language † Ann Senghas, Ann SenghasSearch for more papers by this author Ann Senghas, Ann SenghasSearch for more papers by this author Book Editor(s):Maria D. Sera, Maria D. SeraSearch for more papers by this authorMelissa Koenig, Melissa KoenigSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 February 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119684527.ch3Citations: 1 †This work was supported by Grant No. R01 DC005407 from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Languages are intricately patterned abstract systems, shared by speakers within every social community. The view of language as an adaptive system treats a language as an organism subject to evolutionary principles. Languages have been naturally designed, after generations of child acquisition, to be easily learned by children in their earliest years. Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) serves as the primary daily language of approximately 1,500 deaf people, ranging from 4 years of age to the mid-50s. One line of evidence has focused on changes in expressions of motion events, from holistic to segmented signing. The changes in NSL resemble certain changes documented in the grammaticalization of spoken languages. Evidence from children learning mature sign languages suggests similar processes during typical acquisition. Children use grouping, analyzing, and aligning strategies for many kinds of learning. Mature natural human languages have been subject to learning so many times that we cannot perceive the effect of another pass. Citing Literature Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Human Communication: Origins, Mechanisms, and Functions RelatedInformation
Chapter 4 The Role of Prenatal Experience and Basic Auditory Mechanisms in the Development of Language Maria Clemencia Ortiz Barajas, Maria Clemencia Ortiz BarajasSearch for more papers by this authorJudit Gervain, Judit GervainSearch for more papers by this author Maria Clemencia Ortiz Barajas, Maria Clemencia Ortiz BarajasSearch for more papers by this authorJudit Gervain, Judit GervainSearch for more papers by this author Book Editor(s):Maria D. Sera, Maria D. SeraSearch for more papers by this authorMelissa Koenig, Melissa KoenigSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 February 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119684527.ch4 AboutPDFPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShareShare a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract This chapter reviews both the universal, experience-independent abilities that infants have at birth as well as those already shaped by prenatal experience, and discusses how these interact to lay the foundations of later language development, including the acquisition of grammar and lexicon. Newborns show remarkable speech perception abilities despite their immature auditory systems. Newborns and very young infants exhibit an extensive repertoire of basic auditory, speech perception, and learning skills that allow them to crack the linguistic code in any language they encounter in their environment. Newborns show abilities that are already shaped by learning -from speech heard in the womb. Prosody serves as a bootstrapping cue from very early on in language development, allowing infants to learn about one of the most fundamental properties of their mother tongue, its word order. Infants can rely on prosodic boundaries to access syntactically relevant units. Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Human Communication: Origins, Mechanisms, and Functions RelatedInformation
Chapter 2 Building a Communication System in Infancy Athena Vouloumanos, Athena VouloumanosSearch for more papers by this authorAmy Yamashiro, Amy YamashiroSearch for more papers by this author Athena Vouloumanos, Athena VouloumanosSearch for more papers by this authorAmy Yamashiro, Amy YamashiroSearch for more papers by this author Book Editor(s):Maria D. Sera, Maria D. SeraSearch for more papers by this authorMelissa Koenig, Melissa KoenigSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 February 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119684527.ch2 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Like other animals, human infants show early-emerging perceptual biases that allow them to recognize and orient to the vocalizations of their conspecifics. Infants may show these increased responses in their brain responses, their physiological reactions, and how they control their own behavior to elicit the presentation of different sounds. Some newborn listening preferences are clearly rooted in prenatal experience. Having a bias for listening to speech or looking at signed language can help infants put together elements of their communication system. Newborns may listen to speech and rhesus calls equally because of the acoustic properties they share from being biological or primate-produced vocalizations. The ability to orient to the relevant social beings in their environment might contribute not only to infants' language development but also to social development. Communicative gestures are essential forms of non-verbal referential communication for adults, allowing us to relay information and share interest with others. Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Human Communication: Origins, Mechanisms, and Functions RelatedInformation
Chapter 5 Infant Speech Perception Integration of Multimodal Data Leads to a New Hypothesis – Sensorimotor Mechanisms Underlie Learning Patricia K. Kuhl, Patricia K. KuhlSearch for more papers by this author Patricia K. Kuhl, Patricia K. KuhlSearch for more papers by this author Book Editor(s):Maria D. Sera, Maria D. SeraSearch for more papers by this authorMelissa Koenig, Melissa KoenigSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 February 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119684527.ch5 AboutPDFPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShareShare a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Speech perception in infancy was ignited as a field of study nearly a half-century ago by a publication showing that 1- and 4-month-old infants responded to speech in highly sophisticated ways, and fairly quickly was made more complex by a publication showing that a non-human animal produced this same response. Work on the effects of music experience during the sensitive period for speech learning supports the idea that perceptual narrowing may be influenced by more than speech input. A number of studies now show that infant phonetic learning from complex natural language input requires a social context. Behavioral study provides added evidence to support the existence of sensorimotor connections for speech early in development. Social feedback has been previously linked to infants' speech vocalizations, and the interpretation is that social interaction, contingent social feedback, and social contexts more generally foster advances in speech production. Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Human Communication: Origins, Mechanisms, and Functions RelatedInformation
Why did humans develop precise systems for measuring experience, like numbers, clocks, andcalendars? I argue that precise representational systems were constructed by earlier generationsof humans because they recognized that their noisy perceptual systems were not capturingdistinctions that existed in the world. Abstract symbolic systems did not arise from perceptualrepresentations, but instead were constructed to describe and explain perceptual experience. Byanalogy, I argue that when children learn number words, they do not rely on noisy perceptualsystems, but instead acquire these words as units in a broader system of procedures, whosemeanings are ultimately defined by logical relations to one another, not perception.
Does language reflect the categories of our mind or does it help create them? On one widespread view (cognitive priority), learning a language involves mapping words onto pre-existing categories, leaving little room for language to change the structure of conceptual content. On another view (linguistic priority), conceptual structure is shaped by experience with and use of language. We argue for the latter perspective and present experimental findings showing that nameability – the ease with which a feature can be named – influences problem-solving, category learning, and geometric reasoning. Even subtle manipulations affecting the availability of verbal labels can impact the categories people discover and use. Words do not simply reflect joints of nature, but are used to flexibly carve joints into nature.
Abstract In the last two decades, multiple‐levels of analysis approaches to the study of developmental psychopathology have become widespread. Central to this perspective is the importance of integrating genetic, neurobiological, hormonal, behavioral, and psychophysiological measures into the investigation of normal and abnormal development. Scholars across multiple academic domains, particularly in cognitive, affective, and social development, have begun to chart out brain circuits and mechanisms underpinning the development of social competence and social cognition. The field of developmental social neuroscience exemplifies this integration, combining knowledge of the social brain with an understanding of the context in which it is developing. This new field provides theoretical and conceptual clarity to views of psychopathology. In this chapter, we provide a comprehensive definition of social neuroscience, a discussion of the primary issues with interpretation and integration of information from multiple levels, and several examples of areas where this approach has been particularly beneficial for our insight about normative and abnormal development.
In this concluding chapter, we take a broad survey of the themes emphasized in the other chapters. What are the key challenges in understanding social brain development? What would count as a full understanding of this topic? And how can we sketch a future path to get us there? We propose that studies limited to only the adult brain will not get us there, but that even detailed developmental studies may not. The path of developmental social neuroscience will need to augment its study with comparative research, with multiple modalities of investigation, and with more emphasis on data sharing and abstraction of principles. Attention to these issues can help to forge a truly cumulative and cross-disciplinary developmental social neuroscience.
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
