Linguistic efficacy

Linguistic efficacy

D. Dutta Roy, Ph.D.
Psychology Research Unit
Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
Venue: Workshop on computational & Cognitive linguistics (WCCL - 2014)

Organized by the Linguistic Research Unit
20.3. 2014

The word 'efficacy' means belief in performing the task effectively'. So linguistic efficacy means belief in performing language related task effectively.
    The definition indicates few things:

a) it is belief not attitude, so it is not transient rather ingrained. As it is belief, it affects our cognition mainly. For example, I have belief that I can speak well in front of interviewers. It is not that I am worried to speak in front of interviewers.

b) It involves performing the task. So it is mainly overt expression.

c) It involves language related tasks, i.e., ability to acquire and use complex systems of non-verbal, verbal and written communication. Communication is the process of encoding, transmission, decoding, and feedback. The scientific study of language is called linguistics.

d) here task implies self and non-self imposed tasks. Therefore, the task is both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated in nature.

e) effectively indicates goal achievement. For example speech therapist sets the goal to the patient and patient tries to achieve the task. Here goal setting can be made by individual also. One wants to learn 2nd language English. So he selects the institute of English and joins the course.
Goal achievement includes two things - rule construction and behaviour approximation.  Like other domains, rules are constructed by the individual or by the other people. Here, rule construction means constructing syntax, grammar etc.

f) Individual or person around the individual constructs the rules or grammar of language. And individual regularly tries to approximate his behaviour to achieve the target.

g) linguistic efficacy does not have All or None approach. This is continuous process ranged from least to highest linguistic efficacy. Linguistic efficacy analysis can predict the prognosis of language disorder.

Linguistic efficacy theories

Behaviour approach

Language and thought

Language researchers studied language from different perspectives. Titchner, psychologist of strucural school initially noted relation between tongue movement and language. When we are thinking, it is associated with tongue movement. By the analysis of tongue movement, one can understand what individual is thinking.


Transfer of learning

Psychologists who studied transfer of learning, suggested positive transfer of language learning when two successive language stimuli  are similar.
Previous learning improves performance of next learning. For example, after learning Bengali alphabets, one can easily read hindi alphabets but Tamil alphabets due to almost similar characterization and serialization. There are two types of transfer - positive and negative.

Positive versus negative transfer. Positive transfer occurs when learning in one context improves performance in some other context. For instance, speakers of one language find it easier to learn related than unrelated second languages. Negative transfer occurs when learning in one context impacts negatively on performance in another. For example, despite the generally positive transfer among related languages, contrasts of pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax generate stumbling blocks. Learners commonly assimilate a new language's phonetics to crude approximations in their native tongue and use word orders carried over from their native tongue. While negative transfer is a real and often problematic phenomenon of learning, it is of much less concern to education than positive transfer. Negative transfer typically causes trouble only in the early stages of learning a new domain. With experience, learners correct for the effects of negative transfer. From the standpoint of education in general, the primary concern is that desired positive transfers occur. Accordingly, the rest of this article focuses on positive transfer

Skinner's reinforcement theory

B.F. Skinner wrote about verbal behaviour.  Here verbal behaviour is uttering.  He suggested that verbal behaviour is controlled by the consequence.  Consequence positively and negatively reinforces verbal behaviour.  He wrote about five verbal operants - mand, tact, intraverbal, echoic and autoclitic.

Validation of Skinner's model

Dutta Roy in collaboration with Rutgers university collected online data about computer adaptive training.  30 Indian students (age ranged from 10 to 11 years) were trained with 7 training modules by the university following the framework of Skinner. By the computer aided system, trainees were positively and negatively reinforced (vide results of Old Macdonald). Results reported significant improvement in basic cognitive functions of trainees. They were poor  in performance for those modules overloaded with phonetic discrimination. (

1. Dutta Roy, D. (2008). Assessing Validity of Web-Based Computer Adaptive Training Modules, Journal Of The Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, Vol. 34, No.1, January, 127-136.)

On phoneme discrimination

Application of  Skinner's model

Skinnner proposed functional analysis of behaviour. Behavior analysis focuses on the principles that explain how learning takes place. Positive reinforcement is one such principle. When a behavior is followed by some sort of reward, the behavior is more likely to be repeated. This principle was followed in ABA or Applied Behaviour analysis. ABA is effective for therapy to autistic children. ABA principles and techniques can foster basic skills such as looking, listening and imitating, as well as complex skills such as reading, conversing and understanding another person’s perspective.

Read more about ABA here

Skinner's theory was criticized by  Noam Chomsky. Chomsky proposed a nativist account that regards language as a uniquely human accomplishment, etched into the structure of the brain. He proposed that all children have a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate system that permits them, as soon as they have acquired sufficient vocabulary, to combine words into grammatically consistent, novel utterances and to understand the meaning of sentences they hear. LAD is the universal grammar. Chomsky's theory was supported by cerebral cortex theory. Broca's area, located in the frontal lobe, supports grammatical processing and language production. Whereas Wernicke's area , located in the temporal lobe, plays a role in comprehending word meaning. 

Chomsky's idea that humans are born with a biological program for language development has been accepted by the studies on deaf children. Golden and Meadow et al., 1994) observed that deaf children developed gestural vocabularies with distinct forms for nouns and verbs that they combined into novel sentences conforming to grammatical rules that were not necessarily those of their parents' spoken language. Later on Chomsky was criticized for his concept of universal language theory. 

Psycholinguistic approach

The term psycholinguistics was coined in 1936 by Jacob Robert Kantor in his book 'An Objective Psychology of Grammar'  and started being used among his team at Indiana University, but its use finally became frequent thanks to the 1946 article "Language and psycholinguistics: a review", by his student Nicholas Pronko, where it was used for the first time to talk about an interdisciplinary science "that could be coherent",as well as in the title of Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems, a 1954 book by Charles E. Osgood and Thomas A. Sebeok.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistic researchers study brain processes in morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics of language.  

• Morphology is the study of word structures, especially the relationships between related words (such as dog and dogs) and the formation of words based on rules (such as plural formation).
• Syntax is the study of the patterns which dictate how words are combined to form sentences.
• Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Where syntax is concerned with the formal structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences.
• Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.

Reasoning theories and language competency

Reasoning is the mental activity used in an arguement, proof or demonstration. It is generally associated with rules and methods, formal laws and logic. It involves mental exploration of the reason or cause of an event or happening. Dutta Roy identified five reasoning abilities for language competency. These abilities are reasoning of similarities, analogies, syllogistic reasoning, data sufficiency and coding. One reasoning ability test battery was developed to assess those five reasoning abilities. The test was reliable in terms of internal consistency of item difficulty (Median of Kuder-Richardson Reliability Coefficient= 0.70) based on 994 data of students in 8th and 9th grades. It was administered to 153 students of different rural and suburban schools in West Bengal. Their school examination marks were collected. Results revealed that school examination marks in Bengali and English were correlated with the five reasoning abilities in differential patterns.

Motivation theories and language competency

Motivation is goal directed behaviour. It is the relationship among three things - needs, path and goal. Dutta Roy (2002) observed that intrinsic reading (rKn, rAch, rApp) and writing motivation (wDoc, wEmo, wCreatv)  are positively correlated with first language competency than extrinsic motivating factors. Where as second language competency was associated with extrinsic motivating factor like reading and writing for recognition.

Self-efficacy theories and language competency

Efficacy beliefs "are constructed from four principal sources of information: 

• self monitoring
• enacted mastery experience that serves as indicators of capability; 
• vicarious experiences that alter efficacy beliefs through transmission of competencies and comparison with attainments of others; 
• verbal persuasive and allied types of social influences that one possesses certain capabilities; and 
• physiological and affective states from which people partly judge their capableness, strength, and vulnerability to dysfunction" (Bandura,1997, p79). 

Bandura's model is effective in metalinguistic research. 

First, individual should monitor the sound he elicits. He will create own rules or guided by other rules to approximate his behaviour towards the goal.  For the same, he will regulate the self, and his physiological and emotional changes.


CASE STUDY:


1. She came to me with complaint of muteness in 1990. She could not utter single sound. She was recently married. Her husband stayed in Kolkata for job not able to meet her regularly. She was completely mute. I requested husband to teach her sa-re-ga-ma as she is good singer. Husband was confused as at that time, she could not speak. I assured him. She came to me in the next week and could speak. Before my treatment, she met several ENT doctors, hearing handicapped specialists. Imagine within a week, she was completely recovered. She was suffering from hysterical aphasia.

2. One student was declared as schizophrenia as she repeatedly talk with someone when no one is in front of her. No one can listen to her voice also. One psychiatrist prescribed anti-psychotic medicine also. I have understood finally that she does meta cognition. Finally, I started discussion about her planning process and the counselling helps her to free from such stigma. She came when she was in school. Recently she passed from calcutta university securing first class marks.

3. Another student diagnosed as schizophrenia came to me with the complaint of Alogia, or poverty of speech and word salad. Alogia is the lessening of speech fluency and productivity, thought to reflect slowing or blocked thoughts, and often manifested as short, empty replies to questions. She came to me as if she was physically handicapped. She could not stand alone. I started counselling and requested to stop medicine taking high risk on me. Few years back she secured first class marks in psychology and now she is professional clinical psychologist. She came to me when she was appeared to complete HS.