Build a Baby: Conceptual Primitives Summary : A baby 2can acquire conceptual knowledge by sensory-motor interaction with its environment. The method has much in common with the notion of image- schemas, which are central to Mandler's theory of conceptual development. In first half of this article we focus on various concepts which 1account for the kind of conceptual activity that occurs in preverbal baby. We also 1discuss some of the ways in which image-schemas should be useful in language acquisition in the later half. 1Image-Schemas as Conceptual Primitives Image Schemas are the concepts 1in which spatial structure is mapped into conceptual structure.1According to Lakoff and to Johnson , they help in understanding different variety of objects and events because they associate a set of primitive meanings related to perceptual and motor processes. Mandler says that 1image schemas are dynamic in nature and can have analog representations due to 1spatial relations and movements in space. She says that they are"redescriptions" since one has to use its own experience for defining them. The most common image schema concepts are Containment, Path, Force, Up-Down and Link. Issues Infant's Immaturity (self modification): It is natural to ask 1that the infant has an innate predisposition to form image-schemas of a certain type because of their immature input systems process. Varying Nature: 1M. Johnson (1987) and Lakoff(1987) stressed that image schemas are not the same as "real" images.1Image-schemas are more abstract than images; they consist of dynamic spatial patterns. Natural Grounding: An image-schema's 1meaning resides in its own vocabulary; it does not require other symbols or another system to interpret it. Additional 1content can be added to the system whenever perceptual analysis takes place on aspects of the input not previously analyzed. Now we will discuss 1several image schemas used to create concepts that appear to be early developmental achievements: animacy, inanimacy, causality, agency, containment, and support. Fig 1. The Technique Used in Rovee-Collier's Investigation of Infant Memory Animacy- 1"Judging motion to be animate is similar to judging that a face is male or female— people easily make this categorization but have little idea about the kinds of information they use" (J. M. Mandler, 1988). From the 1early age infants are sensitive to difference between self motion and caused motion. They try to relate the idea of animacy in terms of nonverbal notion whenever they see something moving through the trajectory of motion (Image schemas involved are Path and Beginning of Path). Containment and Support- Babies start to understand the containment from the feeding and clothing because they 1drink, spit things out, watch their bodies being clothed and unclothed, are taken in and out of rooms, and so on. And they enrich their experience by repeating these things thousands of times in a day. Needham and Baillargeon (1991) showed the "Support" surprised the 3 month old babies in his experiments. Mendlar says that the infants were engaged to reproduce understanding of the structure of the behaviors. Causality and Inanimacy- Leslie (1982, 1988) said that 4 month young babies start to observe the events like "launching a ball or car", "a ball rolls and hits another one" and same phenomenon with some spatial or temporal gap. Agency- Leslie (1982) 1showed that both 4- and 7-month-olds were surprised when a hand appeared to move an object without touching it. In the early infancy stage, they try to manipulate the objects. 1Image-Schemas and Language Acquisition According to Bowerman, for explaining language acquisition model we should answer these two questions: 1. How do children associate meanings of words? 2. 1How they are used to facilitate language learning? Listening to the language- Babies will try to interpret the word-meaning by using nonverbal image schemas. Usually they 1map spatial knowledge onto language which has already been accomplished by the time language acquisition begins. Containment and Support Example-"the spoon in the cup"- Brown (1973)- 1Prepositions in and on are acquired early owing to the fact that infants have witnessed their underlying perceptions many times and developed their respective image-schemas. Korean uses different verb forms 1to say either that the door opened itself or Mary opened the door. Infants do not face difficulties in distinguising because of their already established preverbal concepts. Possession- Slobin (1985)- The concept of possessiveness perceived by the baby is governed by the Image-schemas of Causalty. 1Focus on Beginning-of-Path emphasizes the animate or inanimate character of a moving object while focus on End-of-Path emphasizes its destination: in the simplest sense, the place where an object comes to rest is where it "belongs". For ex: A baby using 1"my book,""my chocolate,""my watch,"1request for a movement of the item to itself as destination. Role of spatial relation and analysis -"Mary throws the ball, John runs"- Although these sentences are complex for a baby but it try to relate it through the concepts of animacy, inanimacy, agency, and causality. Because of it has already modelled these thing by image-schemas occur preverbally. Interesting stuffs: •Paul Bloom (Yale)- 4PERSPECTIVES BEHAVIOR: Can a Dog Learn a Word , 2004 He showed that both a baby and a dog are exposed to language, but only the baby learns to talk (Science) and Children's word learning – fast mapping. •Kellogg & Kellogg- Gua, 1933 –Raised as a family member (9 months) –Intimate relationship Where is your nose ? Fig 2 : image courtesy- 3http://www.psy.fsu.edu/history/wnk/ape.html In spite of all this, Gua –Never produced intelligible words –Only understood few References 1. JeanM.Mandler. (1992). Howto build a baby: II. conceptual primitives. Psychological Review, 99(4):587–604. 2. Mark Johnson. (1987). The Body in the Mind. University of Chicago Press. 3. George Lakoff. (1984). Women, Fire, andDangerous Things. University of Chicago Press. 4. AlanM. Leslie. (1988). The necessity of illusion: perception and thought in infancy. In L. Weiskrantz, editor, Thought Without Language. Oxford University Press (Clarendon). 5. Needham, A., & Baillargeon, R. (1991). Reasoning about support in 3-month-old infants. Unpublished manuscript, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. 6. Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 7. Slobin, D. (1985). Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 2. Theoretical issues (pp. 1157-1256). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 8. Perspective Behaviour- Can a Dog Learn a Word? Paul Bloom (11 June 2004), Science 304 (5677), 1605. 9. http://www.psy.fsu.edu/history/wnk/ape.html