Social Cognition, Language Acquisition and The Development of the Theory of Mind

Garfield, Jay L.; Peterson, Candida C.; Perry, Tricia

doi:10.1111/1468-0017.00180

Cited by 190 publications

(145 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…This hypothesis has been corroborated by numerous studies (e.g. Siegal, 1999 ;Garfield, Peterson & Perry, 2001 ;Lohmann & Tomasello, 2003 ;de Rosnay & Hughes, 2006 ;Hughes, Lecce & Wilson, 2007 ;Tenenbaum, Alfieri, Brooks & Dunne, 2008) focusing on the active role that children play in co-constructing with adults and peers the meaning of their experiences. Drawing on Wittgenstein's (1953) concept of meaning as active use, these studies showed that children extract the meanings of words and expressions from their pragmatic use in conversations (Nelson, 2007), namely, from their language games (Grazzani Gavazzi & Ornaghi, 2002 ;Montgomery, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Emotional state talk and emotion understanding: a training study with preschool children

Grazzani

Ornaghi

2011

J. Child Lang.

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The present study investigates whether training preschool children in the active use of emotional state talk plays a significant role in bringing about greater understanding of emotion terms and improved emotion comprehension. Participants were 100 preschool children (M=52 months; SD=9·9; range: 35–70 months), randomly assigned to experimental or control conditions. They were pre- and post-tested to assess their language comprehension, metacognitive language comprehension and emotion understanding. Analyses of pre-test data did not show any significant differences between experimental and control groups. During the intervention phase, the children were read stories enriched with emotional lexicon. After listening to the stories, children in the experimental group took part in conversational language games designed to stimulate use of the selected emotional terms. In contrast, the control group children did not take part in any special linguistic activities after the story readings. Analyses revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the understanding of inner state language and in the comprehension of emotion.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Emotional state talk and emotion understanding: a training study with preschool children

Grazzani

Ornaghi

2011

J. Child Lang.

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“…Our results support these findings with data on gestural comprehension by wild chimpanzees and suggest that capacity to understand pursuit of action by a signaller is more common than previously suggested. (Garfield et al, 2001).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Linguistic interaction is of paramount importance in the current context because it plays a causal role not only in understanding that others have goals and visual attention but more importantly it is fundamental in the development of understanding that others have intentions and beliefs (Garfield et al, 2001). For instance, Call and Tomasello (1994) reported that Chantek, an orangutan who underwent a ape sign language training programme, was able to comprehend the function of human pointing significantly better than the chimpanzee reared in more standard captive conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular investigating cognitive skills underlying communicative behaviour in language trained chimpanzees could provide an important insight into chimpanzee communication . This is because language-training represents the most intense form of enculturation and linguistic interaction may play a causal role in understanding that others have beliefs and intentions (Garfield et al, 2001). Thus, examining the cognitive skills underlying gestural communication in language trained chimpanzees may illuminate how social and cultural pressures may have shaped the cognitive abilities of our hominid ancestors, and perhaps also indicate how these pressures could have led hominids to acquiring symbolic capacities of language.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Usage and comprehension of manual gestures in wild chimpanzees

2012

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An important element in understanding the evolutionary origin of human language is to explore homologous traits in cognition and communication between primates and humans (Burling, 1993, Hewes, 1973. One proposed modality of language evolution is that of gestural communication, defined as communicative movements of hands without using or touching objects (de Waal, 2003). While homologies between primate calls and language have been relatively well explored, we still have a limited understanding of how cognitive abilities may have shaped the characteristics of primate gestures (Corballis, 2003). In this Ph.D. research, I investigated the cognitive skills underlying gestural communication in both wild and language trained chimpanzees, with a special focus on the repertoire and the intentionality of production and comprehension. The study of cognitive skills underlying the production of the repertoire and the role of intentionality is important because these skills are cognitively demanding and are a prerequisite in human infants for their ability to acquire language (Baldwin, 1995, Olson, 1993. My research suggests that chimpanzee gestural communication is cognitively complex and may be homologous with the cognitive skills evident in pre-verbal infants on the cusp of language acquisition.Chimpanzees display a multifaceted and complex signal repertoire of manual gestures. These gestures are the prototypes, within which there is variation, and between which the iv boundaries are not clear-cut, but there is gradation apparent along several morphological components. Both wild and language trained chimpanzees communicate intentionally about their perceived desires and the actions that they want the recipients to undertake. They do not just express their emotions, but they communicate flexibly by adjusting their communicative tactics in response to the comprehension states of the recipient. Whilst chimpanzees communicate their intentions flexibly, the messages conveyed are specific. However, recipients comprehend gestures flexibly in light of the signaller"s overall intentions.Whilst wild and language trained chimpanzee gestural communication revealed similar cognitive characteristics, language trained chimpanzees outperformed wild apes in that they had ability to use signals which made distinctions that human deictic words can make. Whilst these differences between wild and language trained chimpanzees may be due to the different methodological approaches used, it is conceivable that language training may have influenced captive ape cognitive skills in the representational domain. These results from wild and language trained chimpanzees indicate that chimpanzees possess some form of cognitive skills necessary for language development and that cognitive skills underlying repertoire and use in chimpanzees are a shared capacity between humans, other apes and a common ancestor. These findings render theories of the gestural origins of language more plausible.v

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“…Baron-Cohen (1995), for example, has claimed that a fully functioning ToMM (Theory of Mind Mechanism: Leslie, 1994b) would be identifiable around the fourth year of age, as the final step of a developmental sequence which would include the successive activation of several precursors: first, an innate intentional detector, followed by an eye direction detector and a shared attention mechanism. Other precursors of mindreading have been identified in joint attention (Garfield, Peterson, & Perry, 2001;Tomasello, 1995), imitation and emotion sharing (Meltzoff & Gopnik, 1993), the infant's emotional reaction to others (Hobson, 1993), and so on.…”

Section: Current Studies Of the Nature And The Acquisition Of Mindreamentioning

confidence: 99%

Sharedness and privateness in human early social life

Tirassa

Bosco

Colle

2006

Cognitive Systems Research

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This research is concerned with the innate predispositions underlying human intentional communication. Human communication is currently defined as a circular and overt attempt to modify a partner's mental states. This requires each party involved to possess the ability to represent and understand the other's mental states, a capability which is commonly referred to as mindreading, or theory of mind (ToM). The relevant experimental literature agrees that no such capability is to be found in the human species at least during the first year of life, and possibly later. This paper aims at advancing a solution to this theoretical problem. We propose to consider sharedness as the basis for intentional communication in the infant and to view it as a primitive, innate component of her cognitive architecture. Communication can then build upon the mental grounds that the infant takes as shared with her caregivers. We view this capability as a theory of mind in a weak sense.

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Social Cognition, Language Acquisition and The Development of the Theory of Mind

Abstract: Theory of Mind (ToM) is the cognitive achievement that enables us to report our propositional attitudes, to attribute such attitudes to others, and to use such postulated or observed mental states in the prediction and explanation of behavior.

Cited by 190 publications

References 87 publications

Emotional state talk and emotion understanding: a training study with preschool children

Emotional state talk and emotion understanding: a training study with preschool children

Usage and comprehension of manual gestures in wild chimpanzees

Sharedness and privateness in human early social life

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