Is speech learning ‘gated’ by the social brain?

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Abstract

I advance the hypothesis that the earliest phases of language acquisition -- the developmental transition from an initial universal state of language processing to one that is language-specific -- requires social interaction. Relating human language learning to a broader set of neurobiological cases of communicative development, I argue that the social brain 'gates' the computational mechanisms involved in human language learning.

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The mirror-neuron system.

Giacomo Rizzolatti, Laila Craighero (2004)

A category of stimuli of great importance for primates, humans in particular, is that formed by actions done by other individuals. If we want to survive, we must understand the actions of others. Furthermore, without action understanding, social organization is impossible. In the case of humans, there is another faculty that depends on the observation of others' actions: imitation learning. Unlike most species, we are able to learn by imitation, and this faculty is at the basis of human culture. In this review we present data on a neurophysiological mechanism--the mirror-neuron mechanism--that appears to play a fundamental role in both action understanding and imitation. We describe first the functional properties of mirror neurons in monkeys. We review next the characteristics of the mirror-neuron system in humans. We stress, in particular, those properties specific to the human mirror-neuron system that might explain the human capacity to learn by imitation. We conclude by discussing the relationship between the mirror-neuron system and language.

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Cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour.

Ralph Adolphs (2003)

We are an intensely social species--it has been argued that our social nature defines what makes us human, what makes us conscious or what gave us our large brains. As a new field, the social brain sciences are probing the neural underpinnings of social behaviour and have produced a banquet of data that are both tantalizing and deeply puzzling. We are finding new links between emotion and reason, between action and perception, and between representations of other people and ourselves. No less important are the links that are also being established across disciplines to understand social behaviour, as neuroscientists, social psychologists, anthropologists, ethologists and philosophers forge new collaborations.

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Joint attention and early language.

Michael Tomasello, Michael Jeffrey Farrar (1986)

This paper reports 2 studies that explore the role of joint attentional processes in the child's acquisition of language. In the first study, 24 children were videotaped at 15 and 21 months of age in naturalistic interaction with their mothers. Episodes of joint attentional focus between mother and child--for example, joint play with an object--were identified. Inside, as opposed to outside, these episodes both mothers and children produced more utterances, mothers used shorter sentences and more comments, and dyads engaged in longer conversations. Inside joint episodes maternal references to objects that were already the child's focus of attention were positively correlated with the child's vocabulary at 21 months, while object references that attempted to redirect the child's attention were negatively correlated. No measures from outside these episodes related to child language. In an experimental study, an adult attempted to teach novel words to 10 17-month-old children. Words referring to objects on which the child's attention was already focused were learned better than words presented in an attempt to redirect the child's attentional focus.