Studying the mechanisms of language learning by varying the learning environment and the learner

Goldin‐Meadow, Susan

doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1016978

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 79 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Recent work on gesture has shown how it can shape event representations adaptively and efficiently, complementing the affordances of verbal language [134]. People use gesture to highlight information to which we want their conversational partners to attend [135] and to communicate about abstract concepts [134].…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing Experience: Event Models from Perception to Action

Richmond

Zacks

2017

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

136

142

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mental representations of everyday experience are rich, structured, and multimodal. In this article, we consider the adaptive pressures that led to humans’ construction of such representations, arguing that structured event representations enable cognitive systems to more effectively predict the trajectory of naturalistic everyday activity. We propose an account of how cortical systems and the hippocampus interact to construct, maintain, and update event representations. This analysis throws light on recent research on story comprehension, event segmentation, episodic memory, and action planning. It also suggests how the growing science base can be deployed to diagnose impairments in event perception and memory, and to improve memory for everyday events.

show abstract

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing Experience: Event Models from Perception to Action

Richmond

Zacks

2017

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

136

142

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These findings indicate that, first of all, nonverbal behaviors were strongly coupled to verbal production at the beginning, possibly facilitating Jimmy's EFL learning when his verbal language skills were still quite limited. As Goldin-Meadow (2014, 2015 discussed, when children lack fundamental vocabulary, gestures and body language might help them maintain interaction momentum. From our qualitative observations, we can see that Jimmy used nonverbal behaviors in class to emphasize what he said, to attract the teachers' attention, and to strengthen his verbal behavior (to provide a more complete picture of what he is attempting to communicate).…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…In sum, both verbal and nonverbal learning behaviors are crucial for a child's early language learning (Goldin-Meadow, 2014, 2015. Previous studies, such as the one conducted by Sun et al (2014), propose a general outline of children's initial EFL learning behaviors.…”

Section: Complex Dynamical Systems In Efl Learningmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Researchers such as Goldin-Meadow (2015) view body language and speech as an integrated synergestic system, since they share some underlying cognitive components, such as memory and attention (Wijnants, Cox, Hasselman, Bosman & Van Orden, 2012). During communication, there is a synchronization between body language and speech (McNeill, 1992), reflecting the self-organization of these shared cognitive mechanisms.…”

Section: Early Stages Of Very Young Children's Foreign Language Develmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…It's also worthy of attention that body language plays an important role in children's language development. Children often combine gestures and speech during the early stages of first language production, several months before they produce combinations of words (Goldin-Meadow, 2015). One reason for this might be that when children have a restricted vocabulary, body language offers them "a way to extend their communicative range" (p. 2).…”

Section: Early Stages Of Very Young Children's Foreign Language Develmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Foreign language learning as a complex dynamic process: A microgenetic case study of a Chinese child's English learning trajectory

Sun

Steinkrauss

Steen

et al. 2016

Learning and Individual Differences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a b s t r a c tThe current study focuses on one child's (male, 3 years old) learning behaviors in an English as a Foreign Language classroom, and explores the coordination and developmental patterns of his nonverbal (gestures and body language) and verbal (verbal repetition and verbal responses) learning behaviors over time. Guided by the principles of the theory of Complex Dynamical Systems, the child's learning behaviors were analyzed over the course of four months, using (Cross) Recurrence Quantification Analysis and Monte Carlo permutation tests. The results show that the coordination between the child's nonverbal and verbal behaviors exhibited a rigid pattern at the beginning but got loosened over time, allowing the child to respond more flexibly to the teachers' instructions and to alternate more freely between his verbal and nonverbal learning behaviors. When focusing on the child's verbal learning behaviors only, we found that patterns of the verbal responses seemed to be more predictable than those of verbal repetitions, which suggests the varied influence of internal and external factors on these verbal learning behaviors.

show abstract

Hardwiring: innateness in the age of the brain

Grossi

2017

Biol Philos

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract"Hardwired" is a term commonly used to describe the properties of certain behaviors or brain regions. As its usage has increased exponentially in the past 50 years, both in popular media and the scholarly literature, the concept appears to have gained a cloak of respectability in scientific discourse. However, its specific meaning is difficult to pinpoint. In this paper, I examine how "hardwired" has been used in the psychological and neuroscientific literature. The analysis reveals two major themes: one centers on certain purported characteristics of behaviors or brain regions, such as fixedness; the other places these and other characteristics within an evolutionary framework.Overall, the analysis reveals a degree of overlap between "hardwiring" and the folk biology concept of innateness. Various complications arise from such overlap, casting doubts on the usefulness and legitimacy of "hardwired" in scientific discourse.Running head: "Hardwired" as innate 3 Introduction "Insofar as "biological bases" have replaced innate knowledge and structure in the vocabularies of many, they have inherited, so to speak, the implications of the earlier terms while legitimating them with the aura of methodological sanctity." (Oyama, 2000a, p. 6) It is a common refrain that human beings are "hardwired" for some types of behavior. References to "hardwiring" are found frequently in a variety of contexts and texts, not only magazines or popular books about psychology, but also plays and literary essays, typically within the overarching narrative of "human nature" (e.g., Stoppard, 2015;Wallace, 2005). For example, humans are said to be "hardwired" for prejudice (Wartik, 2004), morality (Tancredi, 2005), ripeness (Herbert, 2010), and relationships (Jap, 2016). The term has enjoyed a wide and enduring popularity in reference to sex (2002) remarked on the ambiguity of its meaning:"If "hardwired" means "a behavior that depends on brain wiring," then we need to ask, "As opposed to what? So far as is known, all behavior depends on brain wiring. If "hardwired" means "caused by genes," we have already seen unqualified versions of this idea wrecked on the shoals of developmental complexity. Sometimes "hardwired" is used to refer to a circuit that is not modifiable postnatally. Typically, this usage too is Running head: "Hardwired" as innate 4 problematic, since virtually all of a brain's functions are modifiable in one way or another … Perhaps there exists in some subculture a consistent, useful, and unambiguous role for the expression of "hardwired," but because it is so heavily encrusted with misconception and misdirection, it is preferable to see more precise terminology." (pp. 327-328; italics in the original). INSERT FIGURES 1 AND 2 APPROXIMATELY HEREMore recently, Lilienfeld et al. (2015) too contended that its use should be dismissed, as "… growing data on neural plasticity suggest that, with the possible exception of inborn reflexes, remarkably few psychological capacities in humans are genuinely hard-wired, that is, in...

show abstract

Studying the mechanisms of language learning by varying the learning environment and the learner

Cited by 11 publications

References 79 publications

Constructing Experience: Event Models from Perception to Action

Constructing Experience: Event Models from Perception to Action

Foreign language learning as a complex dynamic process: A microgenetic case study of a Chinese child's English learning trajectory

Hardwiring: innateness in the age of the brain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About