by Sandi Mann
Chomsky argues that human brains have a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate mechanism or process that allows children to develop language skills. According to this view, all children are born with a universal grammar, which makes them receptive to the common features of all languages. Because of this hard-wired background in grammar, children easily pick up a language when they are exposed to its particular grammar.
‘When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the “human essence”, the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man.’
Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972)
Evidence for an innate human capacity to acquire language skills comes from a number of observations:
• The various stages of language development occur at roughly the same ages in most children, even across different cultures.
• Children generally acquire language skills quickly and effortlessly (unlike adults).
Some researchers believe that both nature and nurture are important in language acquisition. These theorists believe that while humans do have an innate capacity for acquiring the rules of language, children develop language skill through interaction with others.
The relationship between language and thought
In the 1950s Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf proposed the Linguistic Relativity hypothesis (sometimes referred to as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, despite the fact that the two never actually co-authored anything). This claimed that language determines the way people think. Differences in the way languages encode cultural and cognitive categories affect the way people think, so that speakers of different languages will tend to think and behave differently depending on the language they use. Thus, the theory controversially claims that there are certain thoughts of an individual in one language that cannot be understood by those who live in another language.
‘No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.’
Edward Sapir, ‘The status of linguistics as a science’, Language 5/4 (1929): 207
The hypothesis is generally understood to have two different versions:
• the strong version (sometimes called linguistic determinism), in which language totally determines thought and in which linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories
• the weak (and less controversial) version (linguistic relativism), in which linguistic categories and usage merely influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behaviour.
Non-verbal communication
Not all language is communicated verbally. Non-verbal communication (NYC) is the process of communication through sending and receiving wordless (mostly visual) cues between people and includes the use of voice (paralanguage), touch (haptics), distance (proxemics) and physical environments/appearance. Even speech contains non-verbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, rate, pitch, volume and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress. It is thought that up to two-thirds of a message is communicated non-verbally.
The development of these non-verbal linguistic skills involves being able to both encode and decode non-speech cues. Encoding is the act of generating the information through facial expressions, gestures and postures. Decoding is the interpretation of information from received sensations from previous experiences. Babies learn non-verbal communication from social–emotional communication, with the face rather than words being the major route of communication (because they don’t understand the words). As children become verbal communicators, they begin to look at facial expressions, vocal tones and other non-verbal elements less consciously; it could be said that they go from being non-verbal to verbal communicators.
Spotlight: Darwin and non-verbal communication
Scientific research on non-verbal communication and behaviour was started in 1872 with the publication of Charles Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In this book Darwin argued that all mammals, both humans and animals, showed emotion through facial expressions. Darwin attributed these facial expressions to behaviours that earlier in our evolutionary history had specific and direct functions. For example, animals that bare their teeth when angry do so because it communicates an intent to bite. Wrinkling the nose is a sign of disgust for humans but in our evolutionary past it would have helped reduce the inhalation of foul odour. According to Darwin, humans continue to make facial expressions even though they no longer serve the original purpose that they were ‘designed’ for, because they have acquired communicative value throughout evolutionary history.
NVC expert Michael Argyle (1925–2002) discussed the function of NVC in 1970 and suggested that, whereas spoken language is normally used for communicating information about events external to the speakers, non-verbal codes are used to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships. In 1988 Argyle concluded that there are five primary functions of non-verbal bodily behaviour in human communication:
1 To express emotions
2 To express interpersonal attitudes
3 To accompany speech in managing the cues of interaction between speakers and listeners
4 Presentation of one’s personality
5 Rituals (greetings).
Some NVC is clearly learned behaviour while some is not. Learned non-verbal cues require a community or culture in order for infants to learn them. For example, table manners are learned examples of non-verbal communication. Dress code is a non-verbal set of symbols that must be established by society – and will vary from culture to culture. Hand symbols, too, vary between cultures and are not innate non-verbal cues. Learned cues must be gradually reinforced by punishment (such as being admonished for putting elbows on the table) or positive feedback.
Case study: Children’s comprehension of NVC
Speakers can influence how recipients will interpret their utterances by using non-verbal ‘markers’. If they wish some other, less obvious interpretation other than the spoken one, they may ‘mark’ their utterance (e.g. with special intonations or facial expression). A groundbreaking study reported in the Journal of Child Language identified this ‘marking’ as a learned form of non-verbal communication in toddlers that develops sometime between the ages of two and three.
In the study, two- and three-year-old toddlers were tested on their recognition of markedness within gestures. The experiment was conducted in a room with an examiner and the test participants, who for the first study were three-year-olds. The examiner sat across from each child individually and allowed them to play with various objects including a purse with a sponge in it and a box with a sponge in it. After allowing the child to play with the objects for three minutes, the examiner told the child it was time to clean up and motioned by pointing to the objects. They measured the responses of the children by first pointing and not marking the gesture (e.g. with facial expression), to see the child’s reaction to the request and if they reached for the objects to clean them up. After observing the child’s response, the examiner then asked and pointed again, marking the gesture with facial expression, as to lead the child to believe the objects were supposed to be cleaned up. The results showed that three-year-old children were able to recognize the markedness, by responding to the gesture and cleaning the objects up far more than when the gesture was presented without being marked.
In the second study, in which the same experiment was performed on two-year-olds, the results were different. For the most part, the children did not recognize the difference between the marked and unmarked gesture by not responding more prevalently to the marked gesture, unlike the results of the test involving the three-year-olds.
Innate non-verbal cues are ‘built-in’ features of human behaviour that do not need to be taught. Generally, these innate
cues are universally prevalent – that is, they can be found in most cultures. For example, smiling, crying and laughing do not need to be learned.
Reasoning
Reasoning is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, for establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying beliefs based on new or existing information. It is thus associated with thinking, cognition and intellect. Reasoning helps to generate new knowledge and to organize existing knowledge, so that it is more usable for future mental work. Reasoning is therefore central to many forms of thought such as scientific, critical and creative thinking, argumentation, problem-solving and decision-making.
There are several different types of reasoning, for example deductive and inductive. Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific cases or observations. This is sometimes called bottom–up reasoning. Scientists use inductive reasoning to create theories and hypotheses – to generate new knowledge. However, this reasoning can lead to inferences that may not be true. An example of inductive reasoning would be: all the birds in my garden have wings and fly; thus all birds must have wings and fly. Clearly, this is not true since many birds do have wings but don’t fly (e.g. penguins and ostriches).
In contrast, in deductive reasoning a person starts with a known claim or a general belief and from there asks what follows from these foundations or how these premises will influence other beliefs. In other words, deduction starts with a hypothesis and examines the possibilities to reach a conclusion. The reasoning goes from the general to the specific. Sometimes this is called the ‘top–down’ approach because the reasoner starts at the top with a very broad spectrum of information and they work their way down to a specific conclusion. This, too, is subject to false reasoning; for example, ‘Fred is a teacher. Fred wears glasses. Therefore all teachers wear glasses.’ This is clearly an illogical process of reasoning (although it is deductive).
The development of reasoning skills in children has been extensively outlined by Jean Piaget and this will be covered in Chapter 10.
Problem-solving
Problem-solving is a mental process that involves discovering, analysing and solving difficulties or conundrums. The ultimate goal of problem-solving is to overcome obstacles and find a solution that best resolves the issue. The early behavioural approach to account for how humans solve problems suggested a trial-and-error process as the main drive (see Chapter 5 on the ‘Law of Effect’). By contrast, the Gestalt theorists claimed that the process of thinking about a problem enabled individuals to ‘restructure’ their representation of the problem, leading to a new insight that enabled them to find a solution.
Barriers to effective problem-solving by humans that have been identified by cognitive psychologists include the following:
• Functional fixedness: this comes into play when an individual is unable to see all the options available to solve a problem. This is known as a cognitive bias because it limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. Karl Duncker (1903–40), a Gestalt psychologist, defined functional fixedness as being a ‘mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem’ (Dunker 1945). This ‘block’ limits the ability of an individual to use components given to them in different ways in order to complete a task, as they cannot move past the original purpose of those components. Functional fixedness becomes apparent between the ages of five and seven, with younger children well able to use objects creatively, even if not for their intended purpose.
• Mental set: this refers to an individual wanting to immediately use a problem-solving strategy that they used in the past to solve a problem. While this strategy may be useful, it means that other options (which might be better) are typically ignored. The strategy thus prevents people from thinking up new ways of solving a problem.
Creativity
No discussion of problem-solving would be complete without also talking about creativity; indeed, the two processes go hand in hand. Creativity is the process whereby something new is formed.
THE FOUR PS OF CREATIVITY
Mel Rhodes (1916–76) was a US educational scientist and the originator of the pioneering concept of the Four Ps of Creativity (1961). These are the separate factors that he felt would influence how creative a person might be at any given time. These are Person, Process, Press and Product:
• Person covers information about personality, intellect, temperament, physique, traits, habits, attitudes, self-concept, value systems and behaviour.
• Process applies to a person’s motivation, perception, learning, thinking and communication.
• Press refers to the relationship between a person and their environment.
• Product relates to ideas; when an idea becomes embodied into tangible form it is called a product.
MEASURING CREATIVITY
During the Second World War the psychologist J. P. Guilford developed tests for selecting certain individuals to enter a pilot’s training programme. In his psychological model called ‘The Structure of Intellect’ (Guilford 1950), Guilford used a factor-analytic technique to separate creative thinking skills from other skills; until this point it had been assumed that intelligence was akin to creativity and that the more intelligent you were, the more creative you were, too. Guilford was one of the first psychologists to postulate that IQ and creativity were distinct concepts. As part of his model, Guilford identified two distinct forms of creative skill: divergent and convergent.
Divergent creativity is that skill or ability to access memory to derive unique, multiple and numerous answers to open-ended questions. Convergent thinking means coming up with ‘one right answer’ for each question, commonly associated with IQ tests. In other words, in divergent creative tasks, there might be many possible answers or solutions, but in convergent there is only one.
An example of a divergent creative task might be to think of a creative use for a pair of plastic cups. Obviously, there are many possible responses. This task was devised by Guilford and is called the ‘Alternative Uses Task’ (see the ‘Spotlight’ below).
A convergent task might be to think of a word that goes before each of the following words: bag and held. There is only one answer (hand) but some degree of creative thinking is required to produce it.
Spotlight: Guilford’s Test of Divergent Creativity
In 1967 J. P. Guilford developed a test to measure divergent creativity, calling it Guilford’s Alternative Uses Task (Guilford et al. 1978).
Test takers list as many possible uses for a common object, such as a cup, a paperclip or a newspaper. Scoring is comprised of four components: originality, fluency, flexibility and elaboration:
Originality is based on each response compared to the total number of responses from a specific group of test takers. Responses given by 5 per cent of the group are unusual (1 point); responses given by only 1 per cent of the group are unique (2 points).
Fluency just totals how many different answers are produced.
Flexibility is based on the number of categories (e.g. weapons, containers, things to wear).
Elaboration is based on the amount of detail given in the response (e.g. saying a cup could be used as a container would get a score of 1 but saying it could be used as a plant pot for seedlings before they are big enough to be replanted in the garden would earn a bigger score).
STAGES OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS
In 1926, at the age of 68, the English social psychologist Graham Wallas (1858–1932), co-founder of the London School of Economics, wrote a book entitled The Art of Thought, in which he outlined an account of the creative process that has become a classic approach to describing creativity. In it, Wallas outlines four stages of the process:
1 Preparation: this is the conscious stage of investigating a problem and using all resources to try to come up with a solution.
2 Incubation: this is followed by an unconscious stage whereby no effort is put into thinking about the probl
em at all.
3 Illumination: this stage is followed by the ‘flash of insight’ that often comes about when we leave a problem and turn to other matters (during the incubation stage). This is also often at the unconscious level.
4 Verification: this final stage is very much conscious again and is a deliberate effort to test the validity of the idea generated.
‘In the daily stream of thought these four different stages constantly overlap each other as we explore different problems. An economist reading a Blue Book, a physiologist watching an experiment, or a businessman going through his morning’s letters, may at the same time be ‘incubating’ on a problem which he proposed to himself a few days ago, be accumulating knowledge in ‘preparation’ for a second problem, and be ‘verifying’ his conclusions on a third problem. Even in exploring the same problem, the mind may be unconsciously incubating on one aspect of it, while it is consciously employed in preparing for or verifying another aspect.’
Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought (London: Jonathan Cape, 1926)