Cognitive Development and Language Learning: From Infancy to Childhood, Apuntes de Psicología

¡Descarga Cognitive Development and Language Learning: From Infancy to Childhood y más Apuntes en PDF de Psicología solo en Docsity! PRACTICE 4: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 1.Describe and summarize the different parts of the documentary Of all the creatures of the animal kingdom, only one has the capacity to talk throughout language of words. But before the human is able to learn those words, we communicate through gestures, symbols and many other figures. The process of learning language begins in the mother´s whom. From the 24th week of gestation, the fetus starts to hear sounds of the outside world, such as the mother´s voice. Over the next few mouths, the fetus becomes familiar with the voice of their parents. This is the beginning of ongoing communication between the baby and the outside world. The first way for babies to communicate is crying since it elicits an immediate response. Crying is an involuntary symbol, but even thought they are involuntary, the mother usually responses. In the video we can see how the baby is crying while the mother is dressing the baby up, and when the baby starts crying, immediately the mother takes the baby into her arms to try to calm the baby down. For the baby is comfortable to her her mothers voice. Janet Weker tries a new method. She introduces a tube into the baby´s mouth that measures the frequency of the baby sucking. Janet wanted to test the ability to identify their parent´s language. They set up two recordings. The first one is a speech in a Filipino language, which doesn´t make barely any response in the baby. She stays calm. However, when she listens to the recording of a speech in English, the language the baby has been hearing for 9 months inside the mother´s whom, she reacts differently. The intensity and frequency of sucking raise up, and when the recording switches again to Filipino, her sucking decreases. This reveals that the language properties begin to be learnt inside the whom. Six-week-old, Rebeca is watching her mother and a friend having a conversation. She can differentiate different noises, such as birds singing or a cough. Another baby is less than 24 hours old. During his 9 moths in the whom he has heard his parents in English. The baby listens to two lists of words as in the first experiment. The first list are prepositions, which are words with no meanings. The second list are words that are meaningful. Again, during the second recording we can state that the levels of sucking increase more than when the first list is played. A little bit older baby is having a conversation with his mother. Whenever the baby makes any sounds, trying to speak, the mother answers him, trying to give some meaning to the baby´s gestures and noises. The baby stares at her surprised. However, we can see also facial communication, which is very important at that age. This are the elemental processes of language, and how babies learn symbols. To get further information about facial expression, a study is made. In the first experiment, the mother is sited in front of the baby, talking to the baby and trying to engage him. The mother is smiling and the baby seems to have fun with her, however, suddenly the mother keeps her face still, and that elicits a different reaction to the baby. He starts making noises to communicate with he, but when he sees that she is not giving him a response, he gets frustrated and starts crying. In the second part of the experiment, the baby sits in front of the TV watching her mother. The baby smiles back when he recognizes his mother. However, something unexpected happens. The image turns upside down, and that is when the baby stops smiling, since it doesn’t look like his mother anymore. Therefore, the baby gets restless. For the third part of the study, the baby is watching her mother again in TV. The mother is smiling and with a happy voice, which makes the baby smile. However, the mother suddenly changes to a sad face and a sad voice, and the baby´s smile fades away. Later on, the mother changes to a sad face and a happy voice which makes the baby confuse and starts to lose interest on the video. The last part of the experiment involves eyes symbols. The mother is talking to the baby but without eye interaction. At first, the baby tries to catch her mother´s attention, but when he sees no results at all, he gets frustrated and starts yawing. 6 months old sits on his mother´s lap and a researcher sits opposite and plays with a colorful toy that makes two noises: “BA” and “DA”, the only two sounds in Indi. To most English speakers is difficult to differentiate between both sounds. What happens is that when a bunny toy appears a “BA” sound is made, and when it disappears the “DA” sounds appears. The baby associates the sound with the appearance of the bunny. How do babies lose the capacity to learn other language? So what about if they are exposed to a second language? A Mandarin researcher is reading a book to a 9 months old baby who has never hear Mandarin before. However, the baby seems to be paying attention. After 12 sessions, the baby is back for the test in response to the sounds he hears (different languages). What the noticed is that baby who had been exposed to mandarin for those first months can differentiate between the 2 sounds of Mandarin, while the one who hadn´t been expose can´t. 9-month-old is bubbling while taking a shower. In the beginning, all babies around the world bubble the same way, but after that age, it changes. Imitation and repetition are key to learning language, such as a mother repeating her baby´s name. The documentary points out that babies before knowing how to speak they recognize that communication is more than sounds and words. They actually know that they can communicate with others thorough a gesture. There are gestures easily interpretable, but there is one that represents a huge mental leap for the baby that begins when he starts to crawl and wants to emphasize attention to something. The documentary shows a child called Iran, for example, that is communicating with his parents through pointing. Pointing is taken into consideration as being an important gesture since is being studied: Dra. Amanda Woodward investigates what babies actually understands about pointing. For example, after eight-month-old Bob have watched Amanda pointing a teddy bear many times, he is no longer interested in it even when she changes the position of it. But when she points out another object (the ball) she catches his attention. When human see a finger pointing they know they are going to see something interesting if they look in that direction. It’s also a way of learning the name of things but, enough? Amanda Woodward’s Joint Visual Attention experiment explores this. 13-month-old Max watches how researchers point and say an invented name of an object, when asked where is that object he recognizes it. But when the researchers don’t point the object he does not get the concept of that object. This experiment shows that when it comes to learning words, human beings need both pointing and the gaze of a person speaking. For 10-month-old Cassi and 20-month-old Erica the only means of communicating is gestures since their parents are deaf. They both show that is easier to learn a signing vocabulary than a verbal one because the centers of the brain that controls speech are developed later than the ones that control movements. They learnt facial expressions and gestures to maintain communication. However, it’s been suggested that imitation is the primary engine for human learning. Ten month old Emily imitates what she has seen people do with a telephone. Even before of learning to speak, they are able to mimic sounds of the language they hear. Another experiment carried out by Andrew Meltzoff studies how babies learn to communicate. A baby called Emma copies the researcher’s action with two new objects for him, even when the objects are so strange, Emma keeps copying. Meltzoff thinks that imitation is the first channel of communication between adults and infants. They do not only know how to imitate, but also the rules of the game. Even an hour after the experiment, Emma still knows the rules of the game. Susan Jonhson devised an ingenious experiment. 14 month-old Jenna witnesses a conversation between the researcher and a strange object that makes sounds. When the experimenter leaves the room, Jenna starts to try to communicate with the object imitating its sounds. Susan Johnson states that this is due to the fact they understand since a very young age the give- and-take of a conversation. After the age of one they start to communicate through words. With the age of 18 months they know between 50 and 100 words, even though they can understand much more that they can say. The most common words that they first learn are related to unforgettable things like food or parts of the body. At this age, however, there is certain vocabulary that is universal, for example the expression “oh oh”. When we are babies, out brain is just trying to map sounds and words and the meaning of them as a puzzle in our brains, but between the ages of 18 months and 2 years a mysterious language emerges. That’s when infancy ends, beginning childhood and, therefore, the language explosion. Susan Jones and colleagues carried out a study. Maya, a 17-month-old child with about 50 words in her vocabulary, is shown objects with invented names. The ones that have the same shape are called in the same way, even though they have not the same size. After the 8 sessions ends, they can identify objects with the same name by its shape. Researchers concluded then that shape is crucial to know the names of things. After the language explosion, they move from saying isolated words to construct micro sentences. Verbal communication starts as playing is filled with language and, as this happens, their inner world becomes visible. From the age of 22 months old, children know about 200 words and understands almost 1000. When children go to bed, they use the time before they fall asleep to rehearse what they have learnt during the day, processing concepts and language. Miranda, a 2-year-old girl, is ending the stage of infancy to move onto childhood, from babbling and cooling to pronounce words and make short sentences. Language allows humans to express feelings, to reflect on the past, and imagine the future. 2. Summarize the most important milestones in language development (since birth to adolescence). First 6 months: • Babies communicate crying, laughing, etc. • Babbling, making meaningless repetitive sounds, until 5th month they repeat the same vowels “ee-ee-ee”, but when they get 4 or5 months old they start including consonants such as “ba-ba-ba” or “la-la-la”. This phenomenon is universal, it’s a pattern that repeats throughout all cultures.