Re: [xmca] Deb Roy: The birth of a word

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

I agree with Greg, Steve. Wonderful summary of lots of interesting stuff in
that video.
Just on the language acquisition part, Greg. You wrote:

Rather, it would seem much more likely that there is a dance between
caregiver and child in which the child provides cues that s/he is nearly
capable of producing the word, and that the caregiver's slowed speech is a
result of the caregiver's attument to the child's readiness.

I would go a lot further. The "slow down" part is not to me the main part of
the message. The process is more one of attunement of velocities, like
entrainment as you write (very like Tomasello and other suggestions to the
same effect).

But what is missing (until Roy does the analysis) are the other essential
constraints that are parts of the entrainment process; the spatial layouts,
the events (bruner referred to them as formats) that "gaga" occurs in, the
various accompanying artifacts of all kinds. All of this should be
obtainable from that flood of bits.

mike


On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Gregory Allan Thompson <
gathomps@uchicago.edu> wrote:

> Wonderful thoughts/questions.
>
> My concern is how Roy's findings will be interpreted. The likely headline
> would be: "Caregivers' slower speech leads to word acquisition in infants".
> And then, of course, at malls all around America we'll see anxious middle
> class parents talking super-slow to their infants in the hopes of getting
> their kids to learn language as early as possible, and thus ensure that they
> will get into the best colleges.
>
> What is needed to combat this interpretation is a close analysis of some of
> these moments of learning. I would suspect (following CHAT/ Vygotsky) that
> if you were to watch the footage in sequence, you would discover that this
> is not simply a matter of SLOWED SPEECH > WORD ACQUISITION. Rather, it would
> seem much more likely that there is a dance between caregiver and child in
> which the child provides cues that s/he is nearly capable of producing the
> word, and that the caregiver's slowed speech is a result of the caregiver's
> attument to the child's readiness, and that the slowed speech may or may not
> be important in and of itself. As Steve notes, this requires a different
> study altogether (maybe the NSA has some data that they can share with us
> from their broad sampling of households?).
>
> And turning to the second half of the video, I can't help but marvel at the
> possibilities for recursivity in the mining of social media. So Deb Roy can
> do a search for "Deb Roy" and see the nearly real time links between the TED
> video and our present conversation (Deb Roy is watching!)? I assume that Deb
> Roy could then post on the web a representation of the real-time links as a
> new source that could then track its own propogation in real time as it
> moves through networks. This "map" would be constantly changing along the
> way as more nodes are added each time it is viewed and commented upon. Isn't
> this what maps should be - not simply recursive, but also constantly
> shifting as territories shift in real-time?
>
> -greg
>
> >Message: 7
> >Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:38:57 -0700
> >From: Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
> >Subject: Re: [xmca] Deb Roy: The birth of a word
> >To: "eXtended Mind, Culture,   Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >Message-ID: <BF511ECF-2948-4CAF-8968-74A9DF57D1C9@me.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
> >
> >Amazing technology and computer work.  But keep in mind the old saw
> >Mike likes to repeat about the man looking for his keys not where he
> >dropped them, but under the street lamp - because the light is
> >better.  Even with amazing technology like this, researchers will only
> >tend to look where things they expect to be true are visible, audible
> >and quantifiable.
> >
> >One of many questions, this one about the featured discovery: what
> >happens to children where the adults and/or older children **don't**
> >slow down as the infant learns a new word?  Is that really a
> >significant factor?
> >
> >Besides the vexing ethical and potential legal issues, this kind of
> >study strikes me as fairly expensive, both in hardware and labor, not
> >to mention creative programming.  As for legalities, I can just see a
> >prime time law show now ... some 9 year-old twins and their
> >grandparents file a civil suit against the scientist parents ...
> >
> >Still, the study makes one curious.  On the theory side, Vygotsky's
> >ideas could be very helpful in this kind of study, and this kind of
> >study could shed some new light on Vygotsky's theory.
> >
> >Vygotsky talks about the child not being able to differentiate at
> >first between their impressions of objects and the objects themselves,
> >and between a word and its phonemic structure.  These abilities must
> >be acquired, and are great accomplishments.  Slowing down one's speech
> >around selected words may help the child focus on making both kinds of
> >differentiation.  I got the impression the child was being
> >specifically coached on how to pronounce wa-ter in the final
> >sequences.  The applied discovery of two principles, the principle of
> >object-relatedness, that "things have names" and the principle of
> >phonemic imitation, that one can imitate the vocal sounds of others,
> >seem to be two discovery threads that came together when the child
> >finally said "water."  Quite the moment.
> >
> >For a while it seemed as though the child was oscillating between a
> >version of 'gaga' and a version of 'water,' and then finally got the
> >idea that one was preferred - and perhaps that a successful imitation
> >would be rewarded.  That was my impression.  I wonder if the reward at
> >first was "I get to splash this stuff all around when I say this
> >stupid new word for gaga!"  Like Mike, the video raised a lot of
> >intriguing questions for me.  For example, what did the next 100
> >attempts at "water" sound like - did the child keep experimenting with
> >"gaga" or stick only with "water," and did the child use "gaga" and
> >perhaps "water" for other meanings?  Vygotsky's analysis, based on
> >empirical evidence at the time from researchers documenting their own
> >infant's first words, would predict the child probably did use that
> >first word for multiple meanings, as a complex.  Did the evidence in
> >this study bear Vygotsky's analysis out?  Would others like it reveal
> >the use of first words as complexes?  And did the pace and merging of
> >these two principles accelerate as the child accumulated more words?
> >I think the scientist said the child had a vocabulary of 503 words at
> >the time he was preparing this report.  Did the child appropriate
> >these words more and more quickly?  Or, if the pace was uneven, what
> >might be some of the factors involved in the variations?  If
> >Vygotsky's identification of these two principles is correct, the
> >child's learning curve should have generally accelerated as the child
> >began to master in a practical way the principles of object
> >relatedness and phonemic imitation.  That would be an interesting
> >hypothesis to test.  I was glad to hear that the project was
> >specifically interested in the relationship of words to events and
> >objects.  There are lots of other Vygotsky- and CHAT-inspired
> >questions that could be asked, including about the roles of different
> >kinds of artifacts, as Mike mentions.  Part of what this team of
> >researchers will do will likely depend on where the street lamps are -
> >that is, on what quantities, spatial relations etc. are available to
> >them that they think they can create meaningful statistical data from
> >- and what they think is meaningful in the first place.  And perhaps,
> >what kinds of suggestions are made to them, and by whom.
> >
> >Another area of an entirely different nature that has my curiosity is
> >over how the boy and his younger sister will get along as they get
> >older, and what studies like this might be able to reveal about what
> >influences sibling relations.  However, the ethical problems will
> >probably preclude such a study.  Should we endorse a 7-year-old and 4-
> >year-old "consenting" to having their playing, fighting etc.
> >videotaped for science hours every day?  Should parents have the right
> >to force them to consent - or have the right to consent for them?  Up
> >to what age?  I am inclined to be opposed to such invasiveness of
> >children on principle, even if the scientific aspect intrigues me.
> >Videotaping consenting adults is another matter.  We'll see what
> >universities, courts, etc. do with this one.  So - does this mean that
> >we may have to settle for mass statistical analyses of TV shows and
> >internet blogs to try to figure out how people really behave?  LOL
> >
> >- Steve
> >
> >
> >On Mar 14, 2011, at 8:28 PM, mike cole wrote:
> >
> >> Interesting digital beams for mediational theorists to travel along,
> >> Jay.
> >>
> >> No one has said what they learned about acquiring a productive use
> >> of a
> >> proper "water" starting with gaa. I thought that the totally uneven,
> >> shakey,
> >> comings and goings of bits and pieces, that finally fell into place,
> >> "the
> >> creation of the internal plane of the word" perhaps (?), was very
> >> interesting.
> >> It missed a lot I wanted to know, but it also directed my
> >> questioning, and
> >> if Roy does not go into Military of Industrial espionage, ,interesting
> >> questions should be answerable; we saw nothing of the multiple
> >> threads of
> >> other people and artifacts in the flow and they were crucial in lots
> >> and
> >> lots of ways.
> >>
> >> The visualization of the mediated interactions constituting American
> >> life
> >> embodied in discourse in digitially mediated activity, was also pretty
> >> amazing.
> >>
> >> The rest is just a different face of the disasters, of such amazing
> >> variety,
> >> that are besetting people at the moment. I wonder what the global
> >> mediated
> >> discourse looks like?
> >> mike
> >>
> >> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 5:48 PM, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Another page that may be a quicker way in to the relevant parts of
> >>> this
> >>> work is:
> >>>
> >>> http://lab.softwarestudies.com/
> >>>
> >>> JAY.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Jay Lemke
> >>> Senior Research Scientist
> >>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
> >>> University of California - San Diego
> >>> 9500 Gilman Drive
> >>> La Jolla, California 92093-0506
> >>>
> >>> Professor (Adjunct status 2009-11)
> >>> School of Education
> >>> University of Michigan
> >>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> >>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> <
> http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
> >>>
> >>> Professor Emeritus
> >>> City University of New York
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Mar 14, 2011, at 6:44 PM, Jay Lemke wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> People interested in a related approach to media analysis using
> >>>> computers
> >>> to find patterns in large video and image databases might look at
> >>> the work
> >>> of Lev Manovich, author of the Language of New Media, whose
> >>> background is
> >>> more in experimental art video, and later in communication and
> >>> media theory.
> >>> He is now at UCSD, see:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://manovich.net/cultural-analytics/
> >>>>
> >>>> under Recent Posts and the Cultural Analytics keyword heading.
> >>>>
> >>>> I have found his work on TV news programs, film styles, and the
> >>>> manga
> >>> fascinating.
> >>>>
> >>>> JAY.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Jay Lemke
> >>>> Senior Research Scientist
> >>>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
> >>>> University of California - San Diego
> >>>> 9500 Gilman Drive
> >>>> La Jolla, California 92093-0506
> >>>>
> >>>> Professor (Adjunct status 2009-11)
> >>>> School of Education
> >>>> University of Michigan
> >>>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> >>>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> <
> http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
> >>>>
> >>>> Professor Emeritus
> >>>> City University of New York
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Mar 14, 2011, at 6:41 AM, Michael Lithgow wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> It's my first time contributing to this listserv, but if I can
> >>>>> add to
> >>> the
> >>>>> wonder being expressed about how this technology might effect media
> >>> research
> >>>>> - I think the potential for studying how news frames emerge,
> >>>>> transform
> >>> over
> >>>>> time, compete and slowly solidify into shared understandings is
> >>>>> also
> >>>>> exciting.  To be able to watch in something like real time the
> >>> discursive
> >>>>> ebb and flow of popular negotiation for hegemonic understanding is
> >>>>> remarkable.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Michael Lithgow
> >>>>> PhD Candidate, Carleton University
> >>>>> School of Journalism and Communication
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 4:32 PM, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Thanks, Peter. Someone also posted on this to the local LCHC group
> >>> list,
> >>>>>> and I replied with the following after watching the video (a TED
> >>>>>> presentation):
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Yes, this is pretty amazing. I was reminded of the work that Lev
> >>> Manovich
> >>>>>> is doing here at UCSD on cultural analytics, trying to identify
> >>> quantitative
> >>>>>> patterns in large amounts of video and image data, such as
> >>>>>> changing
> >>> patterns
> >>>>>> in news programs as  to how much focus there is on the presenter
> >>>>>> vs the
> >>>>>> content, the rise of digital content backgrounds, etc.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> But the MIT group has taken this much further, particularly in
> >>>>>> cross-linking television content to online commentary by viewers
> >>>>>> in
> >>> real
> >>>>>> time. This should be the end of the Nielsen ratings, if they
> >>>>>> weren't
> >>> gone
> >>>>>> already, but its also potentially the end of the survey industry
> >>>>>> as
> >>> well --
> >>>>>> why do phone surveys of hundreds when you can get real time
> >>>>>> reactions
> >>> from
> >>>>>> millions. I can see the news shows commissioning this for "spin"
> >>>>>> on
> >>> major
> >>>>>> events, speeches, maybe the 2012 election. And this may be
> >>>>>> worrying,
> >>> because
> >>>>>> it has an inherent tendency, esp. at the current level of the
> >>> technology (re
> >>>>>> semantic analysis) to grossly over-simplify what are in fact
> >>>>>> much more
> >>>>>> complex meanings being created.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I am happy to see the work on context factors, social input and
> >>> settings,
> >>>>>> in the work on language development in the home. It's Gregory
> >>>>>> Bateson
> >>> meets
> >>>>>> massively parallel computing (GB did some of the first in-home
> >>>>>> filming
> >>> of
> >>>>>> his daughter's first years). But in relying on very simple
> >>>>>> indices,
> >>> like
> >>>>>> utterance length, it's again going to oversimplify. I don't
> >>>>>> think they
> >>> can
> >>>>>> analyze at this point just how the setting and the dialogue,
> >>>>>> over more
> >>> than
> >>>>>> one turn, scaffolds a sense of meaning for the child. Much
> >>>>>> easier of
> >>> course
> >>>>>> to trace the growth of phonology and single word acquisition.
> >>>>>> Still
> >>> it's a
> >>>>>> good step.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Quite fascinating to see something Ivan and I were predicting last
> >>> year:
> >>>>>> people getting used to multi-video displays, where in this case
> >>>>>> you see
> >>>>>> simultaneous video across about 6 rooms in the house in 6 video
> >>>>>> views,
> >>> and
> >>>>>> then all the tv/cable channels at once, dozens of small video
> >>>>>> displays
> >>> in a
> >>>>>> giant array. How to see this? Of course their visual magic of
> >>> re-rendering
> >>>>>> this into a 3D fly-through view of the whole house eliminates the
> >>>>>> simultaneity in favor of sequentiality, and some neuroscience work
> >>> suggests
> >>>>>> that we are best at doing sequential pattern recognition. But
> >>>>>> even a
> >>>>>> multi-video view can appear sequential to the brain when it is
> >>>>>> visually
> >>>>>> scanned in real time by the eyes' movements and attention
> >>>>>> focusing.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Every other word he says is about privacy concerns, but you
> >>>>>> still can't
> >>>>>> disguise the Big Brother potential here: total panopticon
> >>>>>> surveillance,
> >>>>>> video and audio, 24/7 in private as well as public settings. In
> >>>>>> the UK
> >>> there
> >>>>>> are already serious concerns being raised about access to the
> >>> ubiquitous
> >>>>>> outdoor security cam footage, massively increased in the last 10
> >>>>>> years
> >>>>>> everywhere in the country, as it leaks from the anti-terrorism
> >>>>>> units
> >>> for
> >>>>>> whose use it was originally justified to local police
> >>>>>> departments, etc.
> >>>>>> Combining this with effective video and semantic pattern
> >>>>>> recognition
> >>>>>> algorithms presents a real danger to privacy and freedom.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Tis a good wind that blows no ill.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> JAY.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Jay Lemke
> >>>>>> Senior Research Scientist
> >>>>>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
> >>>>>> University of California - San Diego
> >>>>>> 9500 Gilman Drive
> >>>>>> La Jolla, California 92093-0506
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Professor (Adjunct status 2009-11)
> >>>>>> School of Education
> >>>>>> University of Michigan
> >>>>>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> >>>>>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> <
> http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> <
> >>> http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Professor Emeritus
> >>>>>> City University of New York
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Mar 11, 2011, at 12:30 PM, Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son
> >>>>>>> learned
> >>>>>> language -- so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch
> >>>>>> every
> >>> moment
> >>>>>> (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of
> >>>>>> home
> >>> video
> >>>>>> to watch "gaaaa" slowly turn into "water." Astonishing, data-rich
> >>> research
> >>>>>> with deep implications for how we learn.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html
> >>>>>>> __________________________________________
> >>>>>>> _____
> >>>>>>> xmca mailing list
> >>>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> __________________________________________
> >>>>>> _____
> >>>>>> xmca mailing list
> >>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Michael A Lithgow
> >>>>> <514.983.1965>514.983.1965
> >>>>>
> >>>>> PhD Candidate, School of Journalism and Communication
> >>>>> Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Research Associate, OpenMedia.ca
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Contributing Editor, ArtThreat.net <http://www.artthreat.net>
> >>>>> __________________________________________
> >>>>> _____
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> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
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