Gesture, body, and language (PSY 336)
Is there a language of the body, a ‘language’ that does not involve verbalization or even the putative concepts that underlie normal oral language? What does this tell us about what language is and for what the human mind is?
Please comment on your already-obtained PDFs (Goldin-Meadow & Mylander, 1998; Senghas & Coppola, 2001; Singer & Goldin-Meadow, 2005) and today’s presentations. Your blog assignment is due Tuesday night at 11:59pm. You can also check out this site on American Sign Language (with videos).
Please also concentrate on making progress on or otherwise wrapping up their assignments (e.g., annotated bibliography, paper, remaining presentations). Make use of the Psychology of Language page as a outline for future assignments and their order (e.g., your annotated bibliography).
Everyone yet to present should be in contact with me concerning your presentation.
While Goldin-Meadow & Mylander (1998) and Senghas & Coppola (2001) study language of the body in terms of their implications for verbal languages, Singer & Goldin-Meadow’s (2005) suggest that the language of the body has striking qualities of its own, which deserve attention.
In their respective studies on deaf children, Goldin-Meadow & Mylander (1998) & Senghas & Coppola (2001) aim to further our understanding of verbal languages via analyses of special linguistic circumstances. In a study of American and Chinese language-naïve deaf children and their mothers, who had no previous knowledge of sign languages, Goldin-Meadow & Mylander (1998) found that the children were producing home-signs that exhibited language-like structures such as, pattern production, strings of prepositions, and word orderliness. Furthermore, the children produced linguistic constructions more complex than that of their mothers across both cultures, and, interestingly, the American children’s home-signs included grammatical structures more characteristic of Chinese than English, the native language of their mothers. Goldin-Meadow & Mylander (1998) assert that these results are proof of some innate languistic capacity that does not require environmental input. Ultimately, Goldin-Meadow & Mylander (1998) relate these results to an understanding of language, in general.
Like Goldin-Meadow & Mylander, Senghas & Coppola’s (2001) study of Nicaraugan signers aims to answer the standard linguistic inquiries: “Is there a critical period of language acquisition?” and “How do languages develop?” Goldin-Meadow & Mylander (1998) & Senghas & Coppola’s (2001) methodologies are paradigmatic of the generative grammar school of linguistics. Special linguistic circumstances, like the spontaneous production of sign languages, are frequently studied not as unique phenomenon, but as answers to questions regarding typical linguistic circumstances.
Singer & Goldin-Meadow (2005) take a novel approach to body language; rather than studying gestures in terms of what they can tell us about verbal languages, they aim to discover whether or not the language of the body is simply analogous to verbal language, or whether it has notable qualities of its own. In a series of trials, third and fourth graders were given either one problem-solving strategy or two problem solving strategies, in conjunction with a gesture that matched the meaning of the provided strategy, a gesture that mismatched the meaning of the provided strategy, or no gesture at all. While subjects performed worst when given two verbal strategies, they performed best when given a second strategy in the form of a gesture. These results have implications not only for learning procedures, but for the study of body language, in general. Perhaps, researchers ought to study gestures and language of the body not solely for the sake of answering questions regarding our typical understanding of language, but as its own phenomenon.
Manna Pourrezaei, Psy 336
What Meadow and Mylander(1998) have uncovered here is really significant. Anytime children and language are studied the results seem to be significant because this is where language begins and is the most productive. Unlike any other in the animal kingdom, a child human learns language and it just takes off. In the study by Meadow and Mylander(1998) it is pretty ingenious of them to set it up the way the did. They compare american mothers and children to mandarin mothers and children. They then compare between the language gestures that each child has created. It was fascinating to hear that children from two completely different cultures had more similar created gestures that that of their own parents. I think that the experimenters uncover some significant information here about language being innate. This does in some sense give a better idea of language being something innate because of the way that each of these children had similar gestures, and these gestures are obviously, because of the observed data, not a result of learning from the mothers.
David DiLorenzo PSY 336
I think that there is a type of body language that is used for communication, but I am under the impression that body language is not an actual language. I think that body language is used to subtly give away thoughts or to embellish a point that one was making with one language. For example, holding one’s hands far apart might mean big, and can be used to describe something. However, after reading Senghas (2001), I realized their bodies to make a language with different syntax. Also, in Goldin-Meadow & Mylander (1998), sign language is discussed as having syntax, grammar, and a proper structure. I believe that the body can be used to create a language, however, body language itself is not a language. There is no grammar, syntax, or structure to body language- even gestures that are used to illustrate a point are used more for communication than language. In Singer (2005), it was found that gestures do help in teaching students different types of ways to solve problems, but I did not interpret that article to mean that gestures are a type of language, just that gestures can be vital to the understanding of language- body language does give insight to a person’s true feelings and can aid in language, but cannot be used as language by itself.
Mina Ramchand, PSY 336
I believe that there is a sort of language of the body. Sign language itself is a series of gestures, yet, in essence it is also a form of language. Further more both articles and presentations seemed in some ways to suggest that gestures can be, in a way, a form of language.
The article by Goldin-Meadow (1998) shows that children have the ability to create their own type of gesture language when they cannot verbally express their needs. Furthermore, the gestures created by these children were more intricate than those created by their adult parents. This shows that when verbal language is not possible, people do have the ability to use gestures to communicate and even use them as language itself.
Similarly, the article by Senghas and Coppola (2001) show that when learning gestures can be a tool of their own. Students in the experiment did their best when they had a verbal lesson with gestures to teach a different approach. This shows that gestures can act as their own for of language and as their own teaching tool. Though language and gestures are not one in the same, gestures can act as a form of language in some situations.
Lindsay Conn, PSY 336
Goldin-Meadow & Mylander (1998) produce a study which shows how language can be expressed physically. I believe that body language is an important part of how we communicate. Goldin-Meadow & Mylander (1998) use deaf children from two cultures to show how they develop language signs that end up being slightly different than those shown to them by their mothers. I find it interesting how the american childrens signs were more closely related to those of the asian mothers teachings. I feel that Singer & Goldin-Meadow (2005) is an example of how body language helps to further convey the message we are trying to get across. Instead of teaching two ways to solve one problem, the teacher instead explains one method and gestures the ideas of another method. This is interesting because I find it easier to learn this way as well. I agree with Nadia in her presentation when she expressed how she initially thought that verbal and body language were used to help one another or further convey a message but after reading the articles and thinking it through, i feel that body language may be a little of both (assistant to verbal language and a language of its own). I believe this because thinking about a game like paintball, players use only body language (which mimmicks those used in the military). So in the game, without any verbal lanaguage what-so-ever, players can exress to one another various plans of action.
Molly Jimenez, Psy 336
After reading the Singer (2005) article I believe that gesture and body language help to enhance and supplement spoken language but are not “separate” languages. While the concept of gestures separate from verbal content helping children to learn is fascinating, these gestures still coincide with the lesson being taught. Children are not required to simultaneously process two entirely different concepts but rather observe another form of delivering information relevant to the subject. As the Goldin-Meadow (1998) article suggests, gestures most closely resemble natural languages rather than forms of systematized sign languages. Deaf children are able to string together organic gestures in greater quantities than their parents (specifically their mothers). What I am interested in knowing is whether or not the children are adapting to their disability or are displaying the superior affinity for learning language (or in this case language-supplements) which all young children possess. The Senghas and Coppola (2001) article also supports this idea as the second cohort of Nicaraguan sign language speakers were younger at their time of exposure to the language and were able to create more spatial modulations in their language.
Aliza Murray PSY 336
Singer and Goldwin-Meadow (2005) demonstrated the importance of using mismatched gestures to facilitate quantitative learning. They concluded that algorithms detract from the mathematical principle behind the algorithm when they are taught simultaneously. However, the introduction of mismatched gestures during the presentation of the didactic material allowed for a enhanced understanding of both the algorithm and the principle. This finding have many implications for developing greater educational strategies for teachers.
Senghas and Coppola (2001) investigated deaf Nicaraguan children that had never encountered any formalized language. Within a relatively short time these children had systematized a linguistic body for their sign language. The striking finding that young children, that learn to sign, can also be the major contributors to the systematizing of a sign language. The notion of children designing language is an unbelievable notion and is closely aligned with Pinker’s perspectives on language.
Burton Jensen PSY 336
Goldin-Meadow and Mylander (1998), set up an experimental design in order to determine whether the body has its own language system and what this can tell us about verbal and spoken communication. They do this by comparing the gestures produced by deaf children in two vastly different cultures, the US and China, and note the gestures produced by these children while interacting with their mothers and toys. What Goldin-Meadow and Mylander discover is that the children produce gestures that are structured and patterned differently than the way in which their mothers structure their language and gestures. Furthermore, they discovered that the children in China and the US produced similar sentence structures in their gestures, implying that this structure, and subsequently language structures are somewhat innate.
Singer and Goldin-Meadow (2005), studied whether body language can convey a message that verbal language can not, or if it can help to further a certain idea. Singer and Goldin-Meadow did this by pairing matched, mismatched, and no hand gestures to help solve mathematical equations. The findings showed that mismatched gestures helped with the solving of such equations, as it provided a different strategy and way of thinking about the problem that was being presented. These findings suggest that gestures can help further our understanding and mastery of certain material.
Nadia Fernand, PSY 336
I really learned a lot from all three of the articles that we had to read for the blog. The most interesting article to me was “Singer and Goldin-Meadow, 2005″ on gestures and speech. I found it really interesting that they would say that when you speak and you make a gesture that you might actually be conveying two different concepts. Usually when we think of gestures we think of them as being a helper to what we are trying to say. For example, someone might use their hands to speak to someone else because they think that it gets their point across much more clear then just speaking. Where in turn it could just be confusing someone even more. The most interesting portion of the article was that they found that students have to learn to differentiate between the information that they hear and what the teacher is saying to them. I never really thought of it that way but now that I look back, there were plenty of times that my teachers would say one thing and then do something totally different with their hands.
Reading the “Goldin-Meadow, 1998″ article about deaf children and gestures was also very interesting on the use of gestures. Deaf children are the prime users of gestures and it is interesting that their parents were able to communicate to them using gestures, even though neither of them were able to truly understand what the other one was saying. I just think its completely interesting that gestures are so important to communication and that I think it shows that the body does have some type of language. Gestures to me are the bodies way of communicating without words or sounds, and I think that these articles just make the statement that the body has language even more true.
Sarah Galante, PSY 336