Commentary on M. A. Arbib
Word Counts:
Abstract: 56 words
Main Text: 997 words
References: 510 words
Total Text: 1063 words
Abstract: According to the mirror system hypothesis, a common understanding
of action sequences may provide the "missing link" to language. Imitation plays
a crucial role in building on this thesis. In contrast to non-human primates,
caregivers prepare infants to imitate by assisting them "to see what to do"
before they can "do what they see" others doing.
Arbib's ambitious and comprehensive evolutionary framework delineating the neural and functional grounds for modern human language extends and elaborates Rizzolatti and Arbib's "mirror neuron hypothesis" (1998). They argued that the brain mechanisms underlying human language abilities evolved from our non-human primate ancestors' capacity to link self-generated actions and the similar actions of others. On this view, communicative gestures emerged eventually from a shared understanding that actions one makes oneself are indeed similar to those made by conspecifics. That is, this common understanding of action sequences may provide the "missing link" to language.
The ability to imitate has played a crucial role in attempts to build upon the mirror system hypothesis (Arbib, 2002; Iacoboni et al., 2000). However, the empirical literature documents that the pace and extent of non-human primate imitation is very limited with respect to that of humans (Bard & Russell, 1999; Greenfield et al, 2000). Most research investigating the development and implications of imitation focuses on what the child knows, rather than how the child comes to know (Meltzoff & Moore, 1999; Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993; Uzgiris, 1999). This body of research may underestimate sources of the infants' accomplishments located in the caregiving environment.
Arbib, however, briefly acknowledges the vital role of caregivers in the development of complex imitation by human infants (p. 29, line 7), but does not make explicit how caregiver guidance might facilitate the learning of actions not yet in their children's repertoires. Instead, he moves to another grain of analysis, discussing how mirror neurons might function in this process. Filling in that gap, I argue that caregivers build on what infants might "know" from birth. I delineate the interplay of perceptual processes with action that might allow children to come to know "what everyone else already knows", including word meaning.
Imitation and Attention: Affordances and Effectivities Gibson (1979) proposed the notion of affordances, referring to opportunities for action for creatures in their environment. Others add the notion of effectivities (acting itself is informed by what the body can do) (Shaw & Turvey, 1981).[1] I have argued that objects can not "tell us" what they afford (Zukow-Goldring, 1997). Further, caregivers of young infants cannot tell them, as verbal instructions directed to infants before they know "what and that" words mean, prove most ineffective (Zukow-Goldring, 1996). This position suggests that affordances will go unrealized and, perhaps, undetected unless the child has the requisite bodily ability within its repertoire. However, caregivers both direct attention (Adamson & Bakeman, 1984; Zukow-Goldring, 1990) to aspects of the ongoing events and tutor actions to "achieve consensus" (Zukow-Goldring, 1996). These interactional opportunities give infants crucial practice in (and a refining of) what to notice and do, and when to do it. In addition, engaging in these activities may provide the means to grasp important prerequisites that underlie communicating with language. These basics include knowing that words have an instrumental effect on the receiver of a message (Braunwald, 1978), words refer (Bates, 1976), and coparticipants share or negotiate a common understanding of ongoing events (Zukow-Goldring, 1997).
The point is not to deny that children can learn certain things for themselves by trial-and-error. Clearly the physical environment or layout affects us and we surely affect it continuously, but we should not overlook the person and the social environment. That is, by directing the children's attention to their own effectivities in relation to affordances in the environment, the caregiver greatly narrows the search space for learning, and consequently enhances the speed and extent of that learning. I stress again the role of the caregiver in directing attention to effectivities as well as affordances – the two sides of the mirror system.
What basic abilities allow humans to teach and tutor their prelinguistic infants that remain out of reach or, perhaps, out of sight for nonhuman primates? Humans caregivers invite their offspring to imitate new behaviors and intervene and prompt them when their attempts go awry (Zukow-Goldring, in press). To teach effectively, a caregiver must know how to engage in a proffered activity and see whether the novice can use similar methods to achieve such an aim. Further, as infants respond to caregiver guidance, their embodied misunderstandings of caregiver messages often inform caregivers' subsequent feedback. Detecting what infants cannot do and miss perceiving is inextricably linked to effectively educating infants' attention so that their subsequent attempts fall closer to the mark. At this point, caregivers often embody infants, so they can help them get and keep in touch with how the body and the objects of action work together.. Caregiver assistance speeds up learning and increases skill by educating the infant's perceiving what and how to perceive as body and environment meet.
A byproduct of the constant monitoring and engagement in interaction during mundane daily activities is that to get things done members continuously constitute a joint understanding of what is happening. These practices may pave the way to early word learning. Zukow-Goldring, Rader, & Cain (2001 have shown how caregivers bracket ongoing actions with gestures that direct the child’s attention to perceptual information embodied in action sequences as well as the perceivable correspondence between word and referent. Attention to movement and synchrony in gesture and speech facilitates infants' detection of the correspondence between two fundamentally different kinds of things: words and aspects of ongoing events.
In sum, caregivers establish an understanding of what is happening. They gather and direct attention to perceptual structure that makes prominent the relations among animate beings, objects and their actions. These dynamic relations specify the organization and structure of the most mundane daily activities. Caregivers prepare infants to imitate by assisting them "to see what to do" before they can "do what they see" others doing. They introduce their infants to new effectivities or bodily capabilities and affordances for action and interaction on a daily basis. They assist them to link sequences of actions that comprise more and more complex activities. As caregivers educate attention, infants gradually learn to perceive, act, and know in culturally relevant ways.
Notes
1 See Jones (2003) for four recent discussions of these issues.
References
Adamson, L., & Bakeman, R. (1984). Mothers' communicative acts: Changes during infancy. Infant Behavior and Development, 7, 467-478.
Arbib, M. A. (2002). The Mirror System, Imitation, and Evolution of Language. In: Nehaniv, C., Dautenhahn, K., Eds., Imitation in Animals and Artifacts. The MIT Press.
Bard, K. A., & Russell, C. L. (1999). Evolutionary foundations of imitation: Social, cognitive and developmental aspects of imitative processes in non-human primates. In J. Nadel & G. Butterworth (Eds.), Imitation in infancy (pp. 89-123). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bates, E. (1976). Language and context: The acquisition of pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.
Braunwald, S. (1978). Context, word and meaning: Toward a communicational analysis of lexical acquisition. In A. Lock (Ed.), Action, gesture, and symbol: The emergence of language (pp. 285-327). London: Academic Press.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Greenfield, P. M., Maynard, A. E., Boehm, C., & Schmidtling, E. Y. (2000). Cultural apprenticeship and cultural change: Tool learning and imitation in chimpanzees and humans. In S. T. Parker, J. Langer, & M. L. McKinney (Eds.), Biology, brains & behavior (pp. 237-277). Santa Fe: SAR Press.
Iacoboni, M, Woods, R. P., Brass, M., Bekkering, H., Mazziotta, J. C., & Rizzolatti, G. (1999). Cortical mechanisms of human imitation. Science, 286, 2526-2528.
Jones, K. S. (Ed.) (2003). How shall affordances be refined: Four perspectives. Ecological Psychology, 15,115-134.
Meltzoff, A. N., and Moore, M. K. (1999). Persons and representation: Why infant imitation is important for theories of human development. In J. Nadel & G. Butterworth (Eds.), Imitation in infancy (pp. 9-35). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Rizzolatti, G., & Arbib, M. A. (1998). Language within our grasp. Trends in Neurosciences 21: 188-194.
Shaw, R., & Turvey, M. (1981). Coalitions as models of ecosystems: A realist perspective on perceptual organization. In M. Kubovy & J. R. Pomerantz, Eds.), Perceptual organization (pp. 343-415). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Tomasello, M., Kruger, A. C., & Ratner, H. H. (1993). Cultural learning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 495-552.
Uzgiris, I. (1999). Imitation as activity: Its developmental aspect. Imitation in infancy (pp. 209-234). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zukow, P. G. (1990). Socio-perceptual bases for the emergence of language: An alternative to innatist approaches. In C. Dent, & P. G. Zukow (Eds.), The idea of innateness: Effects on language and communication research. Developmental Psychobiology, 23, 705- 726.
Zukow-Goldring, P. (1996). Sensitive caregivers foster the comprehension of speech: When gestures speak louder than words. Early Development and parenting, 5 (4), 195-211.
Zukow-Goldring, P. (1997). A social ecological realist approach to the emergence of the lexicon: Educating attention to amodal invariants in gesture and speech. In C. Dent-Read & P. Zukow-Goldring (Eds.), Evolving explanations of development: Ecological approaches to organism-environment systems (pp. 199-250). Washington, D. C.: American Psychological Association. .
Zukow-Goldring, P. (in press). Assisted imitation: Affordances, effectivities and the Mirror System in early language development. In M. Arbib (Ed.), From action to language. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zukow-Goldring, P., Rader, N., & Cain, T. (under review). Dynamic gestures and early word learning: A test of a perceptually based theory.