Communication
and
Language
Elaborating upon the Relationship
between Language and Social Interaction
Sinéad McNally
Email: smphelan@tcd.ie
Aims
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To highlight the early impact of social
capacities on communication and language
development/acquisition
To explore the social features of language
use, i.e. the pragmatic use of language
Language
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Definition of Language: “system of symbols
and rules that enable us to communicate”
(Harley, 2008); a “culturally specific
communication system” (Hauser, Chomsky,
& Tecumseh Fitch, 2002).
Communication
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Definition of Communication: “a range of
purposeful behaviour which is used with
intent within the structure of social
exchanges, to transmit information,
observations, or internal states, or to bring
about changes in the immediate
environment.” (Stokes, 2001)
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Communication is necessarily social but not all
language use is social or intentional.
Communication is therefore more than the
language system
i.e. it is possible to be communicative without
possessing a functional use of language, and it
is possible to be a fluent language user with
impoverished communicative skills or a lack of
communicative intent.
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However, language is a primary medium in
social interaction, Maynard et al. 2003
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Further, social Interaction may be essential
for speech acquisition, Kuhl 2007
Social Cognition in Language
Development
Atypical Language Development:
Autism
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Autism:
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Neurodevelopmental Disorder
Triad of Impairment: Social, Communicative, and
Imaginative Functioning
Research on Impairment in Autism tells us a lot
about the overlap between social-communication
and language
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Shared communicative impairment in
autism in the pragmatics, or social use, of
language
Recent emphasis on the importance of joint
attention (JA), appreciation of the
communicative intent of others, desire to
imitate
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Kuhl hypothesised that social interaction is
essential for natural speech learning: social
processes in the brain “gate” the computational
processes that are involved in language
acquisition (Kuhl, 2007).
Language impairment in autism appears to
support this theory: impairment in pre-linguistic
social-communicative behaviours in autism play a
significant role in deviation in the development of
language.
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Several researchers have posited a social
deficit theory of language impairment in
children with autism (Dawson & Faja, 2008;
Mundy & Crowson, 1997).
Social deficit: Motivation and Affect
targeted in early intervention
Typical Language Development
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Social-communicative aspect of language use is
present from a very early age
Infant’s capacities for eye contact, laughing and
cooing, and responding with vocalisations to an
adult’s speech, develop in the first few months
of life and are pre-requisites for more
sophisticated social-communicative capacities
such as joint attention (at one year of age) and
symbol use.
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Stern 1977: The communication dance
Trevarthen: Early protoconversations, gaze
direction/eye pointing, joint attention, joint referencing,
turn taking
Young infant as an active agent in the complex social
interactions between infant and caregiver rather than a
passive observer.
Evidence of early social-communicative strategies of
typical toddlers allow him or her to respond to others’
speech without fully understanding the content of that
speech (Paul, 2008).
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Importance of social interaction for
language learning (Bruner, Vygotsky)
Social scaffolding: e.g. requiring more
complex responses throughout interaction
Is speech learning 'gated' by the social brain?
(Kuhl 2007)
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Mandarin learning task for American
infants: Group one exposed to Mandarin
via live interaction; Group two exposed to
Mandarin via TV or audio-only
Learning occurred in live interaction group
only (Kuhl 2007)
Why does social interaction/context have
such an impact on language learning? In
what way?
 General effects of attention and arousal
on learning? i.e. is infant more motivated
to attend to adult and therefore learns
better?
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Or is it that social interaction provides
specific information? Referential
information through eye gaze, shared
attention?
Kuhl raises question: What is a social
agent? Can it be an inanimate object
imbued with interactive features (contingent
and reciprocal interactions) be equally
effective? Yet to find out
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Both autism and Williams Syndrome
associated with atypicalities in the “social
brain”
Evidence of a dissociation in sociability
between inidividuals with autism and WS:
may impact on development in each
disorder (WS gaze longer at faces, Autism
gaze less than typical) Riby & Hancock,
2008
Pragmatics of Language Use
Social Cognition
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Discourse formulation requires understanding &
manipulating both linguistic information & the
cognitive operations essential to the organisation
of information
“Social cognition encompasses wide ranging
abilities including interpreting social cues,
communication, interactions and social
referencing that are sub-served by a complex
distributed neural system” (Riby & Hancock,
2008)
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Relatively little known about what is
absolutely necessary for discourse
production
E.g. grammatically correct sentences do
not ensure well-formed discourse
Conversely, grammatically incorrect
sentences do not preclude successful
discourse production
Pragmatics of Language
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Pragmatic = useful, functional, purposeful
Narrow view = pragmatics is one independent
component in language system
Broad view (interactionist) = communication is
integrated system of rules. Pragmatic functions
drive the choice of syntactic & semantic elements
More appropriate to understand semantics &
syntax in relation to their achieving a desired
purpose in communication
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Discourse is a broad category applicable to
the study of most aspects of language
Influences how we speak (choice of
grammatical categories, sentences,
concepts)
Speaker’s motivation to communicate &
his/her perception of listener’s needs
influences choice of pronouns etc.
Conversational Discourse
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Provides opportunity for a realistic
assessment of how a speaker uses
words/sentences in naturalistic context
Strongly influenced by context (modify
uterrances according to formal/informal
context)
L = social function, therefore should be
studied in interpersonal context
Discourse Coherence
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Clarity of message
We expect discourse coherence
Based on Grice’s set of 4 maxims (1975)
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Quality: information will be truthful
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Quantity: information will be sufficient, not excessive
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Relation: speaker will operate with what they know to be
relevant
Manner: discourse will be clear, concise & organised
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Topic maintenance: how well utterances
relate to each other / to a general topic
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Informativeness: amount of information
provided to listener
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Referencing: identification of individuals,
events, locations, features etc.
Pragmatic Impairment
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Pragmatics explicitly relates language and
cognition
Pragmatic impairment resides at
communication/cognition interface
Theory of mind is considered to be an
ability to take account of each other’s views
and representations of a shared world
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Take account of another’s knowledge by
providing relevant topic responses: referential
behaviour
Joint attention is necessary to talk about a
specific topic/object
Even when JA is successfully maintained, we
must take into account what the other person
knows/believes about the object as well as our
own knowledge/belief
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We must be able to represent different
mental states
Otherwise, interaction progress is limited
We are constantly monitoring listener’s
state
Each system involved is considered to
overlap – no claims of modularity
Primary Pragmatic Impairment
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Linguistic system is essentially intact (phonology,
syntax etc.) but impaired communicative
performance.Result of dysfunction somewhere
within central cognitive system
Cognitive dissociation of some L abilities from
cognitive non-L abilities established in Williams
Syndrome
Also seen in cases of aphasia where
communication unaffected despite Language
impairment
Aspects of Pragmatic Impairment
1. Social Cognition & Theory of Mind
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The ability to make inferences about other’s
actions, beliefs etc. in order to predict behavior
Also the ability to turn-take & modify other’s
behavior through own actions
New evidence for a neural correlate of ToM in left
medial frontal gyrus
Deficits include inability to entertain possibility
that other people have mental states
2. Affect:
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Emotion – plays key role in communication
Strongly linked to ToM & social cognition
In linguistic system affect is linked to prosody
In autism – developmental social pragmatic
model of intervention for language: emphasises
shared affect, linked to meaning and motivation
to interact
3. World Knowledge:
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Depends on other cognitive systems (memory, social
cognition) for storage & acquisition
Closely linked to lexicon (where items have both linguistic
& conceptual characteristics)
World knowledge depends on effective functioning of
other cog systems during development & during L
production & comprehension
E.g. developmental delay can lead to limited interests,
circumscribed knowledge base & hence limited topics
Finally…
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Social deficit negatively impacts on the
development of language
Any language impairment inevitably
reduces communicative effectiveness &
extent of social interaction
Language impairment restricts the speaker
in range of choices available for encoding
what they wish to say
Readings
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Harley, T. A. (2008). The Psychology of Language: From
Data to Theory (Third ed.). East Sussex: Psychology
Press. Chapter 14
Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Is speech learning 'gated' by the social
brain? Developmental Science, 10(1), 110-120.
Paul, R. (2008). Communication development and
assessment. In K. Chawarska, A. Klin & F. R. Volkmar
(Eds.), Autism Spectrum Disorders in Infants and Toddlers.
NY: Guildford Press.
A copy of all readings can be found in June Switzer’s office