PLEASE NOTE: Our seminar room has a limited capacity. Please arrive early to ensure you get a seat. The talk will begin promptly at 5. The next talk in the CDC seminar series will be given by: Katharina J. Rohlfing, Bielefeld University Date: Wednesday, May 9, 2012, 5 PM Location: Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor *From action to language and back* Abstract: In current approaches to understanding the mechanisms of language, factors that embody language in cognition are in focus of investigation. I complement this research perspective by pointing out the other direction of the link between action and language, according to which it is not the sole purpose of language to function in the role as a symbol; it also plays a role as a social signal influencing attention and the memory performance that can be observed in developmental processes. I propose that the relationship between action and language should be viewed as a symbiosis rather than a link. The reverse impact of language onto action can be seen in the phenomenon that has been termed Acoustic Packaging (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996): Imagine that you see a dancer performing a dance. You watch it and it seems to you like a whole. If you would like to learn it, you need to break the whole down into its elements. In dancing classes, the single elements are provided with synchronous speech when a tutor performs them. This way, learners’ attention is drawn to the single elements. Similar to this experience, for a child learning actions, it is difficult to break down the whole to its elements. In this process, it is helpful when a tutor provide verbal input that takes the role of a social signal and marks the single elements. Information that is provided in such a redundant manner will be picked up more easily by child’s senses (Bahrick et al., 2004). Once the single elements are picked up, they can be memorized. The way, language “packages” events can be characterized as education of attention (Zukow-Goldring, 2006; Call & Carpenter, 2002) that drives our understanding of actions. Once such a package is discovered and stored as meaningful (in form of a top-down knowledge), the perception becomes more flexible and independent of a direct link between action and language as social signal. The top-down knowledge is culture specific and seems to be motivated by cultural activities and needs (Majid et al., 2008). This specific role of language as a social signal has been acknowledged for the development of cognitive capabilities such as lexical concepts learning: Infants expect different kinds of naming episodes to have distinct conceptual consequences depending on whether a common noun is provided for a set of distinct objects – which promotes object categorization – or whether a unique noun for each object is provided – which promotes object individuation (Waxman & Gelman, 2009, p. 260). Thus, categorical representation (meanings) emerges not only „as a results of a sensorimotor task that the agents perform to survive in the environment or to imitate a teacher“ (Cangelosi, 2010). Instead, there seems to be a reciprocal education of the cognitive capabilities (Smith, 2005). *Cognitive Science events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events* _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu