Language, Thought, and Communication

Define 'language'

A system of communication used by a specific group of people, unique to humans

Define 'body language'

Conscious and unconscious postures, gestures and movements that convey attitudes and feelings. Also a commonly used term for non-verbal communication.

Describe research into open and closed posture

McGinley et al. found that participants were more likely to change their opinions in line with a female confederate's if she had adopted an open posture when discussing her views, as opposed to a closed posture.

Describe how gender differences affect personal space

Men generally prefer a larger social distance when interacting with other men than women interacting with other women. Fisher and Byrne found that women felt more uncomfortable when a confederate invaded their personal space from the side whereas with men it was from the front

Define 'non-verbal communication'

Sending and receiving messages without using words

Describe how cultural difference affects personal space

Sommer found that English people's personal space is 1-1.5 metres whereas Arabs' is much less. Collet found that Englishmen who stood closer and gave more eye contact were better like by Arabs.

Evaluate Piaget's theory of language and thought

- A strength is that Piaget's theory it is supported by the fact that early language is not random. When children start talking they use two-word phrases like 'Mummy sock', which shows they can see how objects relate to each other. This suggests that children already have some understanding of the relationship between objects and people in the real world before they start to talk. This means that children only start to use language when they have some understanding of it. - A weakness is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis challenges Piaget's theory. It states that language comes before thought as people need a word or phrase for an object to think about it. This suggests that Piaget may have been wrong. - A weakness is that schemas cannot be scientifically measured. It is very difficult to know if schemas exist as we cannot measure them directly. This shows that Piaget's theory of language and thought is not based on solid scientific evidence.

Evaluate research into body language

- A strength of this research is that it can be applied to real-world situations. For example, people who are trying to create a good relationship with others should use an open posture, postural echo and touch. This shows the research is useful in everyday life. - A weakness is that the studies are not always well controlled. For example, in the library study, there may have been other reasons why the participants liked or disliked the librarian aside from the presence or absence of touch. This is a problem for the validity of the results. - A weakness is that research in this area raises ethical issues. For example, field experiments on postural echo and touch involved a lack of informed consent. It is also unclear if participants were debriefed. This could, therefore, affect the trust people have in psychologists

Evaluate research into personal space

- A strength of this research is that it has proved useful in everyday life as if we know that particular groups of people prefer to maintain a larger personal space, we know to 'keep our distance'. Furthermore, doctors could use knowledge about cultural differences by using personal space to make their patients feel more at ease. Therefore, these studies have had a positive impact on the real world. - A weakness is that research into personal space only looks at one factor at a time. Several factors may be affecting personal space distances at the same time such as culture, gender and status. This makes research in this area too simplistic. - A weakness is studies may use unrepresentative samples. It is difficult to use a sample of people in a personal space experiment that reflects all people within a culture, or all males and all females. This means we should be cautious in generalising the findings to everyone.

Evaluate the function of eye contact

- A strength of this research is that studies can explain an important feature of autism. People with autism may have difficulty communicating with others because they do not use eye contact. Therefore, knowing the importance of eye contact means that people with autism could be taught these skills. - A weakness, an issue with this research relates to the use of rating scales to make judgements. Studies in this area rely on people rating their views of 'attractiveness' and 'intensity of emotion', and these are open to bias and interpretation. This suggests that studies of eye contact may produce subjective evidence. - A weakness is that studies of eye contact also involve quite artificial tasks. In Kendon's study, participants were asked to get to know someone as part of the experiment. This means the findings may lack validity as they do not reflect what would happen in everyday life.

Evaluate the study into bees by von Frisch

- A strength of this study is that von Frisch's work made an important contribution to science. People always knew that bees danced but had no understanding of the meaning of these movements. This shows how valuable his research was as it has improved our understanding of how these animals communicate. - A weakness of this research is the importance of sound was overlooked. Esch found that when bees performed dances in silence, other bees would not then go on and investigate food sources. This shows that sound-based signals also play a part in directing other bees. - A weakness is that bees do not always respond to the waggle dance. Gould found that bees did not use the information from the waggle dance to fly to nectar if it was placed in a boat in the middle of a lake. This shows von Frisch's account was incomplete.

Evaluate Yuki's study of emoticons

- A weakness of this study is that emoticons may not represent human faces. Emoticons do not include those tell-tale lines on people's faces which give us further information on how to interpret their eyes and mouth. This means that the results may lack relevance to everyday life. - Another weakness is the study only investigated two types of emotion. In everyday life, faces express a whole range of emotions - fear, surprise, disgust, etc. Therefore, the study does not give us insight into how the full range of emotional expressions is interpreted by people of different cultures. - A final weakness is that rating scales may not be the best method of measurement. Emotions are very complex and rating scales reduce emotion to a single score. Therefore Yuki et al. may have measured the interpretation of emotions in a too simple way.

Evaluate the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

- A weakness of this theory is that differences between cultures may have been exaggerated by researchers such as Boas. There are actually only two words for snow in Inuit culture and English probably has more words for different types of snow. This shows that the differences aren't that great, and challenges the conclusion that language may determine thought. - A weakness is that having more words for snow doesn't mean that the words came first. The Inuit language may have more words for snow because there is always lots of snow. This suggests that language develops because of the way we perceive our environment, which supports Piaget's view that thinking influences language. - A strength is that the hypothesis explains the link between language and intelligence. Bernstein suggested that working-class children will always fall behind in school because their use of the restricted code will have a negative effect on their ability to think. This shows that language influences a particular type of thinking (intelligence).

Describe the study into bees by von Frisch

- Aim: To describe the dance of the honey bee as a means of communicating information to each other - Method: von Frisch put a food source close to the hive (within about 10-20 metres), as well as one further away (up to 300 metres). Over 20 years he made more than 6000 observations - Results: 60% of bees went to food sources at the distance indicated by the dances, worker bees tell the others where pollen is located by two types of dance: - Round dance: bee moves in a circle to indicate food is less than 100 metres away - Waggle dance: moving in a figure of eight, bee waggles its abdomen on the straight line in the 'middle' of the eight. This line points at the source of pollen. Speed indicates distance - Conclusion: Bees use a sophisticated form of animal communication. The signalling system has evolutionary value as it helps their survival

Describe Yuki's study of emoticons

- Aim: to find out if there is a difference in how emoticons are understood by people in the East (Japan) and the West (America) - Method: 95 students from Japan and 118 students from America - an independent groups design. Six emoticons were shown with different combinations of eyes and mouth (sad, happy or neutral). Participants rated the emoticons for happiness using a 9-point scale - Results: the Japanese gave higher ratings to faces with happy eyes then the Americans, even when the mouth was sad. Americans gave higher ratings when mouths were happy even when the eyes were sad - Conclusion: This suggests that cultural groups interpret facial expressions differently, which may be due to cultural norms and expectations

Describe and evaluate research into the recognition of colours in Native American cultures

- Brown and Lenneberg found that the Zuni people have only one word for shades of yellow and orange and had difficulty recognising and recalling these colours compared to English speakers. Their lack of words for those two colours affected their ability to distinguish between them. This suggests that the difficulty distinguishing between yellow and orange could be because of a lack of words for those two colours in Zuni language. Roberson et al. found that the Berinmo people of New Guinea had only had five words for different colours and had difficulty recalling and distinguishing between a variety of colours - One weakness with research involving other cultures is that the participants may not have fully understood the task or researchers may have misunderstood the answers. For example, the Berinmo people may have been able to distinguish between the colours but didn't communicate this ability to the researcher because of a language barrier. This means that such research may lack validity. - Furthermore, another issue with this research is that some researchers have found the opposite - that people with different colour words were still equally good at recalling colour. Heider and Oliver tested the Dani of New Guinea who has only two words for colour: 'mola' and 'mili' (which basically correspond to light and dark). This suggests that their lack of colour words did not affect their ability to think about colour. - A strength of this research on the recognition of colours is it provides support for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It shows that at least the weak version is correct

Outline the evidence that non-verbal behaviour is learned

- Cross-cultural research: comparing behaviours between cultural groups. If behaviours are different, this suggests that they are learned rather than innate - Contact vs non-contact cultures: one cultural difference in NVB is in terms of personal space. People from contact cultures (the Mediterranean and Latin America) are comfortable with smaller personal space. People from non-contact cultures (the UK and the US) maintain a larger distance between themselves and others. - Gestures: pointing one's index fingers is acceptable in Western culture to emphasise what is being said but offensive in Hindu culture (Black) - Explaining cultural differences: social learning theory can explain cultural differences (observing and imitating others). People observe what other people in their culture are doing (e.g. personal space) and copy that behaviour

Describe Darwin's evolutionary theory

- Darwin and evolution: Darwin proposed the theory of natural selection: the genes for any behaviour that improves an animal's chance of survival and reproduction are more likely to be passed to the next generation. Therefore the genes have been naturally selected - NVC has evolved and adapted: Non-verbal behaviours that are beneficial (adaptive) are naturally selected. Baring teeth in a fight cause the attacked animal to get scared and leave, and therefore both animals in the fight are more likely to survive. This means the behaviour is adaptive - it helps protect the survival - Comparisons with human behaviour: opening eyes wide indicates surprise because it evolved from animal behaviour - it would help animals under threat to see an escape route. This behaviour is passed down to humans and continues to express surprise - Serviceable habits: behaviours adaptive to our distant ancestors (e.g. wrinkling the nose and baring teeth). These behaviours still show how we feel but may not serve the original adaptive purpose

Outline the evidence that behaviour is innate

- Neonate research: if non-verbal behaviour is shown as birth it is likely to be innate - Social releasers: these are non-verbal behaviours like smiling which make others want to look after babies (Bowlby). This is adaptive because it means that a young baby will be looked after and the genes passed on. - Facial expressions: Rosenstein and Oster found that young babies' faces showed disgust with novel foods like citric acid (found in lemons). This suggests such facial expressions as a way of communicating emotions are innate. - Sensory deprived: an animal or human without a sensory ability, such as hearing out of sight. If they show the same non-verbal behaviour with normal hearing or vision this suggests the behaviours are innate. Thompson found similarity in blind children and children with normal vision in terms of facial expressions such as surprise.

Describe the relationship between language and thought according to Piaget

- Piaget's theory of cognitive development concerns how our thinking develops. He proposed that we learn by developing schemas about the world - Language depends on thought: children develop language by matching the correct word to their knowledge. Thought and understanding comes first, language develops after - Young Children: children only understand words when they have reached the correct stage of development and are ready. They can have language without understanding but will not be able to use it effectively - The development of language: sensorimotor stage- children speak towards the end of their first year, preoperational stage - from 2 years they talk about things not present - Logical thinking: Concrete operational stage- by 7 years children's language become mature and logical as they question things and create their own ideas

Describe the function of eye contact

- Regulating the flow of conversation: Kendon found that speakers looked away when they were about to speak and gave prolonged eye contact when about to finish. Shows eye contact encourages turn-taking in conversation. - Signalling attraction: Conway et al. found that people who use eye contact are judged as more attractive even with a negative facial expression - Expressing emotion: Adams and Kleck found that participants judged emotions of joy and anger as more intense when shown a picture of someone gazing straight at them as opposed to gazing away. In contrast, they judged emotions of fear and sadness as more intense when the gaze in the picture was averted

Describe the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

- Sapir and Whorf suggested it is not possible to think about something you don't have words for - Thinking depends on language: language comes first and thought afterwards. There are two versions of the hypothesis: one which believes words determine our thoughts (strong) and one which says that words just influence our thoughts (weak) - Strong version: if there are no words for thought, object or idea then you can't think about it. This is why it is difficult to translate ideas from one language to another. - Weak version: Words help to 'carve up' the world. However, you can still imagine something with no words for it - Weaker version is preferred. If the words we have for a concept or idea are limited, our ability to notice or recall that idea will be limited

Evaluate Darwin's evolutionary theory

- Strength is the theory is supported by research. Ekman et al. identified six primary emotions: surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness and sadness that are found in all people. If behaviour is universal this suggests it is in our genes, supporting Darwin's evolutionary theory. - A strength is that there is support from newborn baby studies. Babies are born with the ability to smile or maintain eye contact, which suggests that because these behaviours are innate. This supports the idea that they have been selected by evolution to help the child's survival. - A weakness is that Darwin's theory can't explain cultural differences in non-verbal communication. Personal space and gestures differ from culture to culture. This suggests the theory doesn't explain all non-verbal communication.

Describe and evaluate research into the recall of events in Native American Culture

- Whorf investigated Hopi language and found it doesn't distinguish between past, present and future. This influences the way they think about time One weakness of this investigation was the only one individual was studied. Some argue that Hopi and European languages describe the passing of time similarly. So Whorf's conclusions lacked a firm basis in fact - Carmichael et al. gave two groups of participants the same pictures but each group heard different descriptions. When they were asked to draw them, the pictures drawn reflected the labels they had heard. One weakness was that the materials used were ambiguous. Usually, we would be less influenced by labels. So we may not be able to generalise the findings to everyday life.

Describe three properties of human communication not present in animal communication.

1. Plan ahead and discuss future events: Humans can use their language to plan ahead and discuss future events (displacement). In contrast, animal communication tends to focus on things that are physically present in the environment, such as food sources or predators. Therefore, displacement is not part of animal communication in the same way as it is part of human communication 2. Creativity: Animal communication is a closed system as the gestures, sounds and movements refer to specific events. Human language is an open system as words can be combined together in an infinite number of ways. This means that human communication has endless potential, i.e. it is creative 3. Single vs Multiple Channels: Human language can be expressed using a whole range of different channels such as spoken, written or sign language. This is not a feature of animal communication which tends to use single channels such as pheromones

What are the four functions of animal communication?

1. Survival: vervet monkeys use sounds for danger (alarm calls). A specific sound warns other monkeys close by. Rabbits use visual signals. They lift their tail and pin ears back to communicate danger to other rabbits. These signals increase the chance of survival of members of the signaller's species 2. Reproduction: Animals use mating displays. Peacocks stretch their feathers to attract females. Mating displays communicate genetic fitness through brightly coloured and plentiful feathers 3. Territory: Animals mark territory through spreading scents. Rhinos produce 20-30 piles of dung to communicate that an area is occupied. This has evolutionary value as it takes less energy than fighting. 4. Food: Animals use signals to show the location of food. Ants leave a pheromone trail to communicate the location of food source

Define 'schema'

A mental framework we have of what we already know and believe about the world around us. These frameworks are based on previous information and experiences, helping us to organise and understand new information that we receive.

Define the term 'adaptive'

Adaptive means any physical or psychological characteristic that enhances an individual's survival and reproduction, and so is likely to be naturally selected. Such characteristics are passed on to future generations.

What is 'closed posture'?

Adopting a position with arms folded across the body and/or crossing the legs. May indicate disagreement or irritation.

What is 'open posture'?

Adopting a relaxed position in which the arms are not folded across the body and legs are not crossed. May indicate being relaxed or being in agreement.

Define 'animal communication'

Animal communication is the exchange of information between animals within the same species using a variety of signals. Some of these signals are vocal (involve sound) - but some are visual or involve smell.

Describe research into body language. Refer to 'touch' in your answer.

Fisher arranged for a librarian to hand books to female students in a library. Half of the students were touched lightly on the hand and half were not. When asked afterwards, those students who were touched spoke more positively about the librarian/library than those who were not. This shows that touch can affect our attitudes towards other people. McGinley got an experimenter to go up to people and have conversations with them using an open or closed posture. When questioned later, those people who saw an open posture described them as warm and friendly whilst those who saw a closed one viewed them as unfriendly and hostile. This suggests that posture influences our impression of people.

Define 'postural echo'

Mirroring or having a similar body position to another person in social interaction. It may indicate being in agreement or friendliness

Define the term 'neonate'

Newborn babies, less than a month old

Define the term 'personal space'

Personal space is the distance we keep between ourselves and others in everyday life. It is like a bubble that we carry around with us. We feel uncomfortable or threatened when it is invaded.

Describe how status differences affect personal space

Status might be defined as someone's rank or position within society or a workplace. For instance, two geography teachers in a secondary school would have similar status, whereas a student and the head teacher will have different status. Zahn found that people who have equal or similar status tend to maintain a closer personal space than those with unequal status.

Describe research into postural echo

Tanner and Chartrand found that participants had more positive feelings towards a new drink if the researcher had used postural echo during the interview, than if there was no postural echo.

What is the evolutionary theory?

The evolutionary theory explains how species have adapted to their environment over millions of years. Behaviours that increase the chances of survival and, most importantly, successful reproduction, are naturally selected and passed on the next generation

Define eye contact

When two people are looking at each other's eyes at the same time. It has a number of roles in communication: regulating the flow of conversation, signalling attraction, and expressing emotion