Thursday, October 25, 2007

Tea for Two

My friend has a baby daughter, Jazmin, who is about 7 months old. While among a group of adults who were playing a version of peekaboo with her, she started intermittently shrieking with glee. But besides being amused by the game of peekaboo, Jazmin's expression suggested she was interested in the sounds she herself was making. Babbling is a form of play that allows infants to learn what sounds they can make, what pitches and tones they can create, how loud and soft they can go. However, I think its also important to note the social aspect of this example; Jazmin was also testing out different verbal responses within the context of physical interactions.

While this is a simple example, I think it is important to note just how important social interaction is to language development. This makes a great deal of sense because in a hard-to-imagine world without social interaction, communication language would be mostly unnecessary. The experience of feral children support this view to some extent; Genie, who had almost no social contact never fully developed language, while Isabella, who had some contact on a fairly regular basis with her blind mother, developed language fully.

In class, we discussed how visual social cues can help babies learn the meaning of words. By watching where the speaker is looking when they refer to something new, the baby can often infer the meaning of the new word. What about blind babies, though? While they have the ability to sense the language of their parents (unlike deaf babies of hearing parents), they may have a difficult time learning what many of these words refer to, since they cannot see where their parents are looking. What effect might this have on language acquisition?

The phenomenon of conversational babbling also supports an interactionist view, as infants imitate the rhythm and intonation of adult dialogue. Adults will often engage infants at this stage in mock conversations, where the child babbles, and the adult gives some verbal expression suggesting they understand (i.e. "You don't say!", "Really! That is so interesting.", etc.). Interestingly, intonation and rhythm are the first parts of language babies hear inside the womb. As adults, we often don't think about how important these elements are to communication, especially social relationships. And yet infants go through a stage of babbling that is all about emulating the "style" of conversation. Are babies trying to convey meaning at all or are they simply "practicing" these social elements of dialogue? Whichever is true, this form of babbling reflects the social nature of language.

Social interaction and language are so intertwined that it seems almost impossible to develop a test (at least, a morally sound one) that would determine if and how language could develop. The closest example seems to be that of feral children in comparison with children involved in Nicaraguan Sign Language. Feral children had little to no language exposure or social interaction, while deaf children in Nicaragua had social interaction, but no language exposure (to a language they could sense). The Nicaraguan children had "home signs", but once they were grouped with other deaf children without a language, they developed an entirely new language.

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