Various levels of communication
exist among living creatures, but none can compare to the communication
developed by humans: language and grammar. The human being’s version of
communication exceeds all other species; this allows us to express ourselves to
a higher degree and consequently enhance our knowledge of the world around us.
Some forms of communication come instinctually in human infants; they can cry
when they want to eat or drink, and understand the action of suckling to fix
this desire. Due to the lack of evidence that genetics makes human’s the only
species with linguistic skills, many scientists such as Dr. Daniel Bor—the author
of The Ravenous Brain--believe that
humans are not made to learn language but instead possess a vast capability to
learn an exorbitant amount of knowledge, which includes the development of
language. Of course, newborn infants do not possess the skills necessary to
verbally communicate, which makes their future development of language skills
later in their childhood a prime research area in order to understand language
development among humans as a whole.
For the
past two decades, the predominant theory on language development in children stated
that the number of words a child is exposed to during their development of
language correlates with a child’s intellect and language fluency later in
life. An article recently published in The New York times called Quality of Words Not Quantity, Is Crucial to
Language Skills, Study Finds by Douglas Quenqua dissects the reasoning
behind this study and its resulting implications on society, following up with
the presentation of a new study that supports the theory that the quality of
conversation—rather than quantity--between adults and children better
determines later language efficiency. According to the study, affluent families
expose their children to 30 million more words than those of lower-income
families, which results in the educational gap seen between the two classes. The
implications of this study caused a rush of publicly funded and nonprofit
programs founded in order to close this “’word gap’” between the social classes
(Quenqua, 2), pushing the nation to increase their vocabulary in order to
improve the quality of their children’s language skills.
However,
a more recent study on the early development of language skills questions the
validity of the “landmark education study”(Quenqua, 1) that pushed towards the movement
of filling the word gap; the general consensus of this recent study stating
that the quality of conversation experienced by a child at the age of language
development--rather than the quantity of words exposure--is what actually
enhances a child’s communication skills. Quenqua says that the three aspects of
a quality verbal interaction with a child--shared symbols, rituals, and conversational
fluency—are what give children an early educational advantage over their counterparts.
The article defines shared symbols as identifying words with visual objects
within a social context, rituals as explicitly explaining everyday events every
time they are practiced, and conversational fluency as using full sentences
while conversing with a child. As Dr. Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek put it—a psychology
professor at Temple University and author of the study Quenqua examines—these
three aspects of a quality verbal interaction are “the stuff from which
language is made” (Quenqua, 2).
While Quality of Words, Not Quantity, Is Crucial
to Language Skills, Study Finds explains the results of qualitative
discussion among adults and, the article does not provide the probable
reasoning behind this conclusion. Thankfully, The Ravenous Brain by Daniel Bor provides sufficient insight into
the neuroscience behind Dr. Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek’s study. In The Ravenous Brain, Bor delves into the
mechanics behind learning and how we as humans exploit our skills to accumulate
knowledge of the world to an extensive degree. At the base of this acquisition
of knowledge lies the working memory-the gateway to our long-term memory supply—which
surprisingly can only hold three to four items at a time. This limit to the
working memory applies to adults, monkeys, and newborn infants; but anyone
could see that the average grown adult can acquire knowledge much more efficiently
and intricately than either a monkey or an infant. The question is, how is it
possible to learn such an extensive amount of information that humans as a
whole possess when the working memory can only take in three to four items at a
time? The answer Bor provides lies in the human capacity to chunk information;
this chunking process crams a plethora of related ideas into the 4 items the
working memory can maintain, cheating the mind into absorbing more information
than originally intended. We can do this through our innate desire to find
patterns in the world, some of which being the three aspects which constitute
quality communication with a child. Symbols, rituals, and conversational
fluency all exemplify methods of absorbing a greater amount of information
within the limitations of working memory’s capacity; and if the three aspects of
gaining language skills are examples of chunking patterns, doesn’t that mean language
acquisition derives from our ability to chunk? Bor certainly attributes the
acquisition of language to conscious chunking, for through the combination of
verbal communication with others and the surrounding context, “We slowly build
up our language, with many words initially starting as overly generalized
chunks” (Bor,151) which with time can be altered to properly follow the rules
of linguistics. Further proof of the correlation between language acquisition
and chunking comes from the relations between the two action’s brain scans.
When learning an artificial grammar, the activated region of the brain is the
same as the area activated during chunking. Seeing that there is no specified
region of the brain devoted to the development of language, it is hard to argue
that genetics plays a role in language, but rather that the proper teaching of
our verbal communication skills through our distortion of the working memory
enables us to use language.
The
difference between quantity and quality of language in regards to acquisition in
young children lies in the process of chunking described by Bor. The main
aspect of verbal conversation in humans is not how many objects or actions you
can identify by the proper name, but how well you can communicate your thoughts
in fluent sentences. A bombardment of vocabulary without quality language makes
it harder for a child to learn through chunking, because connections that facilitate
chunking are harder to formulate. Through simply repeating the necessary
components of everyday conversations while interacting with a child, the child
is able to chunk an entire phrase rather than the individual words that make up
the phrase, thereby fitting more information into the tight restrictions the
working memory provides. Also, as children acquires more chunks made of
complete sentences rather than words, they can find the relationships and
patterns in grammar and phrasing in order to formulate their own sentences from
scratch, creating what Bor refers to as “the linguistic objects we’ve already
learned to hone our skills further, building up our rich web of meaning” (Bor,
151).
Back
when quantity of words was known as the deciding factor in early verbal fluency,
the rush to “’close this word gap’”(Quenqua, 2)—although noble in intention—was
headed in the wrong direction. What we realize now is that rather than exposing
out kids to an extra 30 million words in their infant years, the best option is
to converse with children with symbolic, ritualistic, and complete sentences in
order to reaffirm a child’s conscious decision on what is important to chunk. In
light of these new findings we realize the dangers of blindly filling a word
gap, for Dr. Hirsh-Pasek emphasizes that there is no point filling a gap with
knowledge if there is no foundation for this knowledge to build upon. This
foundation we need in order to improve language efficiency of lower income
children comes from quality sentences that enables a child to purposively use
the words rather than just know them. Fortunately, society seems ready to
accept that the new research on early language development requires this
foundation in order to succeed; for example, the Too Small to Fail organization
–originally designed to close this word gap between lower-class and affluent
children—now acknowledges the necessity for emphasizing the importance of
language quality in order to eradicate these academic inequalities. With this
new information on how children can best develop their initial language skills,
we can now properly provide developing minds with the skills necessary to communicate
that makes the human existence so unique. When we observe young children, it is
easy to see that their earnest desire to acquire the skills their elders have—such
as walking and talking—is truly ravenous, verifying The Ravenous Brain’s claim that our incredible ability and desire
to learn is interwoven with “our awareness, to the rich and deep experiences
that constantly punctuate our lives” (Bor, 77).
Bor, D. (2012). The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of
Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. New York: Basic
Books.
Quenqua, D. (2014, October 16). Quality of
Words, Not Quantity, Is Crucial to Language Skills, Study Finds. Retrieved
October 16, 2014, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/quality-of-words-not-quantity-is-crucial-to-language-skills-study-finds.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
