PSY274H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Charades, Handshape, Perseveration
Document Summary
Given the fact that experience with a particular modality may bias sensitivities, best strategy is to look at young children (least experience with the vocal auditory channel. Can see if humans possess some predisposition to use this channel. They compared 18 and 24 month old hearing children. They wanted to know to what degree a child with forge an association between a sound and a thing, and gesture and a thing. Tested degree to which children assume unfamiliar spoken word vs. arbitrary gestures referring to something. They did the same thing but with gestures instead of the word. Pattern where the better use and knowledge of the vocal auditory system, the decline of using the gesture system. With distinct kinds of signs for nouns/verbs, consistent word order) taken as evidence for a biological predisposition for communication systems with certain kinds of properties, despite the modality (voice vs. hands)
