Language Development and First Words in Culture

1. Language Development – Part I

2. Language is one of the most visible developmental change • Many functions, including socialisation • Communicating intentions, thoughts, feelings • Understanding other people • Participating in social interactions with more experienced participants • Becoming a full-competent member of the society

3. What are the first recognisable words in your culture? • In which contexts do they emerge? • With what consequences?

4. Levels of linguistic processing • Audition: learning how to distinguish basic sounds of language • Articulation: learning to to control mouth, tongue and larynx to produce sound

5. Levels of linguistic processing • Audition: learning how to distinguish basic sounds of language • Articulation: learning to to control mouth, tongue and larynx to produce sound = phonological development Productive or expressive use of language

6. Levels of linguistic processing • Audition: learning how to distinguish basic sounds of language • Articulation: learning to to control mouth, tongue and larynx to produce sound • Lexical: learning of words with conventional meanings – creating articulations Receptive and expressive components

7. Levels of linguistic processing • Audition: learning how to distinguish basic sounds of language • Articulation: learning to to control mouth, tongue and larynx to produce sound • Lexical: learning of words with conventional meanings • Grammar: system of rules to assign meanings • Pragmatics: how we can use language in particular settings • Literacy

8. Why language development is social? • capacities of the infant and young child as the source out of which language emerges. • Social context in which language acquisition occurs. The social support of adults are inclined to provide to language learners is partially a consequence of the social capacities that infants possess

9. What do we mean with communication? All interactions are communications?

10. Early communication: 2 months-old • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmp3FM3Fygc Do you think this infant is trying to communicate?

11. Dialogue and communication: structural characteristics • Communicative actions repertoire (expressions, words, gestures) • Self-synchrony (coherence and organisation of actions) • Affective and interactive synchrony (sync. own actions and emotions with those of the other) • Turn-alternation • Coordination of attention (understanding and coordinating own’s and other’s attention)

12. Protoconversation • M.C. Bateson: Early forms of infant communication emerging around 2m. • Trevarthen: 2 months-old present basic aspects of intentional communication (smiling, bubbling, burbling) • Grounded into the capacity to perceive and share others’ emotions and thoughts -Intersubjectivity(Reddy, Trevarthen) • Similarities with adults’ interactional organisation • infants are actually able to initiate conversations to engage adults in interactions (Berducci, 2010)

13. Protoconversation • Speech preparatory movements: precursors of adult speech actions • Configurations of movements and affects organised as patterns of actions • Multimodality similar to adults’ communication https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm37vKnDdh8

14. Speech preparatory movements: precursors of adult speech actions • Configurations of movements and affects organised as patterns of actions • These configurations follow the conversational turn-alternation  interactional order and organisation of the turns and pauses similar to mature participants

15. Speech preparatory movements: precursors of adult speech actions • Configurations of movements and affects organised as patterns of actions • These configurations follow the conversational turn-alternation • Emotional synchrony and sharing  Expression of emotions contingent and coherent with those of the other, implying a basic understanding of their meaning

16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmp3FM3Fygc

17. Turn taking • Key aspect of adults’ interactional order • Evident in early routine activities like social games and daily care practices structured by caregivers in conversation-like interactions • Early emergence: • From birth (Gratier, Trevarthen) • From 2 m.o (Tronick)

18. Turn taking • Key aspect of adults’ interactional order • Evident in early routine activities like social games and daily care practices structured by caregivers in conversation-like interactions • Early emergence: • From birth (Gratier, Trevarthen) • From 2 m.o (Tronick) Real capacity or caregiver’s illusion?

19. Disrupting the interactional synchrony • Still face paradigm • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0 • Murray’s perturbation experiments: Showing infants videos with delayed engagement of the mother

20. Communicative intentions Tomasello: authentic communicative exchanges require • Having communicative intentions • Understanding other’s communicative intention in the form of mental representation  Before 9 months of age infants do not have communicative intentions. They do not have mental representations of others’ minds

21. A paradox • What is an intention? When does it start? If communication is what drives towards sense making processes (or shared meanings) then how can they be the premises for communicating?

22. Next week • Language arises initially as a means of communication between the child and and the people in his environment • Later on language organises the child’s thought and it becomes and internal mental function  internal speech • Then it leads to reasoning (in groups) and developing and checking the basis of one’s own thought  internal speech and reflective thought

23. Alessandra Chiera Ricercatrice di Roma 3 susviluppodellamentee del linguaggioe lo studio deidispositivicognitivicheregolano la produzione e comprensione del discorso