We invite you to attend Dr. Marie Coppola's tenure talk as part of the psychology colloquium Wednesday, October 3rd at 3:30pm in BOUS A106.
Title: How Language Emerges, Develops, and Supports Concepts
Abstract:
How do new languages form? I have been fortunate to be part of a small team of scientists investigating the emergence of a new language, Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), that arose from the interactions of members of a new Deaf community only about 40 years ago. My projects in Nicaragua center on deaf individuals, called homesigners, who live outside this new community, and lack access to this emerging sign language. Nevertheless, they have developed gesture systems that they use as their primary language with the hearing people in their lives. I have found, paradoxically, that linguistic properties in homesign are far more robust to this lack of linguistic input than are many core aspects of cognition, such as social cognition (representing what is in another person’s mind) and number cognition (exactly representing quantities larger than 3).
These findings with homesigners led me to my second main line of research: asking whether varied language experiences might help explain the significant “math gap” long observed between deaf and hard of hearing children and their same-age hearing peers in the US and other countries. To address this question, we examined the developmental trajectory for basic number concepts (e.g., understanding the meaning of “seven”) in four groups of children. We have recently discovered that Deaf children learning American Sign Language (ASL) from their Deaf parents from birth show the same patterns as do hearing children who learn spoken English from their hearing parents from birth (Early Language groups). However, on average, deaf children who begin acquiring ASL or spoken English at some point after birth (Later Language groups) perform more poorly. Thus, the timing of language exposure is important for the development of age-appropriate number concepts, but the modality of language (sign vs. spoken) is not. This research has both theoretical implications for the nature of language and its relationship with other cognitive domains, as well as real-world implications for the importance of ensuring early exposure to language for every child.
The remaining colloquium scheduled is listed below.
Psychological Sciences Colloquium Schedule 2018-2019 Academic Year
All talks will take place in BOUS A106 at 3:30pm on Wednesday’s unless otherwise noted.
October 24, 2018
Dr. Tara Behrend, Department of Organizational Sciences and Communication, George Washington University
Title: The Psychology of Workplace Surveillance
November 7, 2018
Dr. John Dovidio, Department of Psychology, Yale University
Title: Racism among the Well-Intentioned: Subtle Discrimination, Implicit Bias, and Implications for Racial Disparities in Healthcare and Health
November 14, 2018
Dr. Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut
Tenure Talk
Title: TBA
April 3, 2019
Dr. Jana Iverson, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh
Title: TBA
For more information, contact: Whit Tabor, Dept. of Psychological Sciences at whitney.tabor@uconn.edu